The One Show host Alex Jones has opened up about her time on a raunchy 90s dating show, where she was forced to sit her university exams in the same location as the show was filmed
The One Show presenter Alex Jones has opened up about her wild appearance on the raunchy 90s Magaluf dating programme. Alex said that while on the show Prickly Heat, “everyone was having sex with everybody.”
The 48-year-old star featured on the Sky series back in 1998, presented by Davina McCall and Julian Clary, whilst studying theatre, film and television at Aberystwyth University at the age of 21.
In a surprising twist, following the show’s steamy challenges and a chaotic booze cruise, presenter Davina stepped in to help her complete her university exams by acting as an invigilator. Speaking on Jamie Laing’s Great Company podcast, Alex explained how she pleaded with her university to send her exam papers abroad, managing to fit in her studies around the filming schedule.
“I had been a contestant on this dating game show, which was filmed in Magaluf. Davina was the host with Julian Clary”, she said. “It was called Prickly Heat. Something like 40 people between the ages of say 19 and 23 in Magaluf, everybody was having sex with everybody, and it was just really good fun.”
When Jamie enquired, “Does Davina remember?” she responded, “Oh my god, completely. I did my finals for my degree in Magaluf. The university was like, ‘absolutely not, you’re not doing your finals in Magaluf’, and I was like ‘please let me go and do this’, so they flew my papers out and Davina was the invigilator.”
Alex faced some turmoil the day before her examination, when one of the participants reportedly grabbed her revision notes and is thought to have hurled them into the sea. During the podcast, Alex also disclosed that Davina had sent all the contestants a little card afterwards with a personal message, something which she still has today.
Often described as a precursor to shows like Love Island, Prickly Heat involved contestants staying in a villa in a holiday resort setting and participating in various challenges.
Since her first appearance on reality TV, Alex has become a household name in the entertainment industry. She is now best known for hosting The One Show since 2010, when she took over from Christine Lampard.
Elsewhere in the interview, Alex has reflected on her co-host Jermaine Jenas’s sexting scandal as she admitted she was ‘the last to know’. Alex and Jermaine, 42, worked together on the popular evening magazine show from 2020 until his departure in 2024. Jermaine was taken off the show after being fired by the BBC for sending inappropriate messages to female employees during his time at the corporation.
The sexting scandal also cost Jermaine his 13-year marriage after his wife, Ellie, the mother of three of his four children, announced the pair were divorcing earlier in March. She said: “JJ and I had become good friends. I was the last to know. The BBC dealt with it, and I think if people feel uncomfortable, they have to deal with it.”
The presenter continued: “If it was my daughter, and she was at work in whatever industry and she felt uncomfortable, I would hope to God that I’d given her the tools to be able to speak up. If she was brave enough to speak up, because it is a brave thing to do, I would hope that the company, corporation, whoever, would deal with it.”
“Lots of journalists are asked, ‘Have you ever had experiences that are uncomfortable? If you go back to the 90s, early 2000s, there was stuff and there were ways that things were said that weren’t great. But, nothing has stuck with me, nothing makes me shudder. And I know the type of girl I was then, and I wouldn’t have handled it.”
Jamie responded: “It’s one of those things that you’d be worried that if your job were on the line, you wouldn’t have said anything.”
Alex confirmed: “Yeah, I know I wouldn’t have said anything, and so I’ve got a lot of respect for the girls that did, because I do think it is an incredibly brave thing to do.”
