Fuelling Around podcast: Jake Humphrey on presenting Formula 1 and BT Sport football

BT Sport presenter Jake Humphrey joins Jason Plato and Dave Vitty this week to talk about being the face of BT Sport’s football coverage and how his career has afforded him to own some magnificent cars. 

The 43-year-old – who has worked for several of the UK’s top broadcasters including BBC, ITV and Sky Sports – has been working in television for 20 years and has been the face of BBC Sport’s coverage of Formula 1 before joining BT Sport where he has since become the lead football presenter.

Jake Humphrey on BT Sport job being a big gamble

Humphrey joined BT Sport ahead of the 2013-14 Premier League season to front their football coverage, but upon joining the broadcaster he had wondered if he had made the right decision to leave BBC Sport. “It felt like more of a risk when I turned up for the first day at BT Sport,” Humphrey stated.

“I remember walking into a room of six people sitting around a table and I said ‘nice to see you all’ and they replied ‘this is all of us, this literally is the whole of BT Sport.’ There were no studios, there were no other presenters, there was nothing other than one bunch of Premier League TV rights and some other stuff we inherited from ESPN, who BT had inherited. 

“But there was a whole list of factors that still made me feel like it was the right thing to do. One of the really big first lessons I was given in TV was when my first boss said to me ‘my one bit of advice for you is to never sit in the comfy chair’ and that did ring in my ears.” 

Jake Humphrey on presenting Formula 1

Despite enjoying Formula 1 when he was a child, Humphrey never thought in his wildest dreams he would be the lead presenter of BBC Sport’s coverage of the biggest motorsport competition in the world. 

“I had never been to a Grand Prix. We had no money when I was a kid, so I didn’t grow up in a house where we were off to watch Formula 1 because it was expensive. But as soon as it was mentioned to me I started thinking ‘I can’t even imagine how good that would be.’

“And I remember they asked me to write on a side of A4 how I would present Formula 1 and I took it in thinking we were going to have a great conversation about it and I gave it to them and he put it on top of a pile of papers about six inches thick and I thought, oh that’s how many people are writing a piece of A4. At that point I thought this is never going to come my way. 

“A few weeks later they called me for a meeting and we spoke about Formula 1 for a bit and they said ‘would you like to count how many steps it is from here to the lift’ at the old Television Centre, which basically means bugger off for five minutes. I had a walk and these people were having a discussion that’s going to change the rest of my life and I walked back in and they said ‘Mr Sloan and Mr Wilkin would like to offer you the job of being the BBC’s presenter of Formula 1’ and I said ‘Mr Humphrey would be delighted to accept.’” 

Enjoy plenty more Fuelling Around

Series three has come to a close now, but there’s still a wealth of previous episodes for you to wrap your ears around.

A string of celebrity guests have littered the award-winning offering that has so far produced a string of cracking episodes to listen to. 

You can also tune into Fuelling Around on Spotify, Apple, YouTube or various other platforms if you want to see what all the fuss is about.