Life in the fast lane

 

THERE is a terrific picture on Twitter of journalist Jennie Gow interviewing Sir Lewis Hamilton. 

The pair are surrounded by camera crews as the Formula 1 legend holds aloft one of his many trophies, outshone only by the brilliance of his trademark diamond stud earrings. But it’s actually Jennie’s full-beam smile you notice first.

Flip to her website and there’s that smile again — this time as she interviews another uber-glamorous global sporting superstar, David Beckham.

No wonder she’s smiling, eh? Who wouldn’t want to be her as she travels the world as a Formula 1 reporter for BBC Radio 5 Live, socialising with the rich and famous and living the kind of high life she could never have imagined as a schoolgirl at the Piggott School in Wargrave.

“That’s a good one,” laughs Jennie. “There’s no budget for helicopters, private jets or business class seats. Most of the time we fly budget airlines with hand luggage only.

“It must look very glamorous from the outside but waiting outside for two hours in the pouring rain and freezing cold so we can speak to a driver or spending hours in airports with delayed flights really

isn’t so glamorous.” In any case, 44-year-old Jennie originally wanted to be a war correspondent, like her heroes John Simpson and Kate Adie.

“I wanted to be just like them,” she says. “Clearly it wasn’t to be but it was my dream for a long time.”

And so it was that a teenage Jennie, inspired partly by her mum explaining to her the power of journalism, turned up for a week’s work experience at her award-winning local newspaper, the Henley Standard.

She recalls: “It was the first ever work experience I did in the little offices above the printers in Henley and it ignited my passion for journalism.”

After cutting her teeth on the most menial of tasks, Jennie now has the fullest CV you’ve ever seen.

After university and formal journalism training, she joined BBC Sport as a production secretary.

Two years later she was traffic and travel presenter for BBC Radio Solent, then changed jobs to report on football matches at Southampton, Portsmouth and AFC Bournemouth.

Next came a radio station in Portsmouth before becoming host of the breakfast show on Somerset’s Orchard FM. While covering speedway there, she was spotted by a TV producer who asked her to present the World Longtrack Championships.

This led to presenting speedway and motocross on Channel 4 and Sky.

From summer 2004 she worked as a continuity announcer for ITV and after a stint at Reading 107 FM, Jennie became a presenter on Sky Sport News.

In March 2010, she was announced as the new presenter of the BBC’s MotoGP coverage before filling in temporarily as a pit lane reporter on BBC Radio 5 Live in 2011, the job becoming permanent a year later.

In 2014 she joined ITV4 as presenter of the channel’s Formula 1 coverage and moved to the BBC following the rights transfer in 2018.

She says: “It has taken me years to get into F1 but it has all been worth it. In general, it is far less glamorous than people tend to think as there is an awful lot of waiting around, travel and loss of sleep but it’s a high adrenaline job so it’s worth it.

“There isn’t much time for social activities when you’re on the road either, though occasionally a team puts on a function and we get to have a drink or a meal with other people in the F1 paddock. “I would recommend it but it has to be said you have to do your groundwork and start at the bottom. Not many people like to do that anymore — they all want to walk into the F1 paddock and do an interview with Lewis Hamilton.

“We have a very small group of people who work on BBC Radio 5 Live F1 — there’s a producer, commentator, summariser and me. It always surprises people quite how few people make quite so much content.

“I’m fortunate enough to get to do a little of everything in my role — I present on radio and TV, write and commentate. I like the variety but the joy of radio is the immediacy and intimacy and no one really recognises you in the street.”

Things can go wrong when broadcasting live, of course. On the grid at the Monaco Grand Prix in 2015, for instance, Jennie called a major movie star by the wrong name not once but twice.

She says: “That was awkward and I can’t count how many times I’ve appeared in Colemanballs in Private Eye — live radio tends to make you say things you would never say if you were writing or reading a script.”

The mum-of-one may also be easier to recognise than she thinks, at least in her home village of Wargrave.

“I had loads of part-time jobs before ‘making it’ in the media,” she says. “I worked at the Hair Company in Wargrave and if you were a client in the mid-Nineties there is a fair chance I would have washed your hair for you and made you a cup of tea.”