5 minutes with... Jonny Smith

Jonny Smith

Jonny Smith

Fifth Gear co-host Jonny Smith has a new series, Industrial Junkie, on Discovery's Quest channel.

The motoring journalist, 30, can be seen embarking on a journey of adventures exploring some of Europe's largest industries.

The Somerset-born presenter and his wife recently became parents for the first time, with daughter Kitty-Mae.

HOW DID YOU BECOME INVOLVED IN THE INDUSTRIAL JUNKIE SERIES?

It's made by North One Television who makes Fifth Gear, and they knew Quest wanted this show to go ahead - but they were never really sure who they wanted to front it, and I happened to be in the right place at the right time. I chatted to the head of Discovery Europe and she really like the stuff I'd done on Fifth Gear, and I think she quite liked my inquisitive nature. I think the reason I got the gig was because I'm from a family of engineers, but I'm not actually one. So I've grown up around them and I've got a questioning nature. So I was really hungry to find out about industrial processes which we use every day of our lives.

HOW WAS THE FILMING?

The weird thing about Industrial Junkie is that lots of things happened during filming. I didn't die obviously - so it wasn't like the filming of The Crow with Brandon Lee. It was amazing because the filming started last May and then I got married in July. Two days before my wedding I came back from filming and developed a face infection, so one side of my face looked like a hamster on my wedding day. So that was not so cool. Then in Norway, when we went out to film the oil documentary, I developed chronic stomach pains which I thought was just severe indigestion. But then I realised this pain was getting progressively worse, so I filmed an extra day kind of clutching my chest and then decided there was something seriously wrong. The medic on board said they didn't want me on the rig anymore because if it became serious they didn't have surgical facilities. So I got airlifted off in the dead of night back to shore, where there was an ambulance waiting on the helipad. I was taken straight to hospital where I had immediate surgery. It was the most painful thing I've ever experienced I have to say. I'm really glad I'm okay now. The weird thing is, because I had to take eight weeks off filming I was at home in December and January. And because I hadn't been at home much at all since my wife and I had got married, we ended up conceiving a child. So that's why I've now got a daughter of 10 days old sitting next to me. So it's quite a memorable series for me, and hopefully people will enjoy watching it.

WHAT WERE YOUR HIGHLIGHTS?

I got to travel to some really cool places. I have to say I'm a really big fan of Scandinavia, and I got to go there three times. We went to Sweden for several of the episodes - one of them was building trucks. We tested arctic trucks on frozen lakes, which was quite dangerous and not the sort of thing you do every day. And I'd never driven a truck. The Alfred Nobel explosives factory in Sweden was also very cool. When you're in a factory making one of the most deadly things that man has ever created and you're surrounded by kilos and kilos of it - it is quite unstable. They did a little test with us and showed us what one gram of this stuff can do - and one gram can blow an oil drum and perforate it with holes. We were carrying five-kilo buckets of it around. It would literally destroy a street. We did a lot of dangerous stuff, but it never felt lethal.

WHAT WAS IT LIKE PRESENTING A WHOLE SERIES ON YOUR OWN?

I really enjoyed it. I never felt like I was presenting it as such - I just felt like I was on an adventure. The camera was with me like a friend. So I purposely didn't research the processes we were going to be dealing with too much because I wanted it to be new and fresh and a real surprise when we were filming. I wanted it to be genuine. I've learnt an awful lot - a huge amount. It's funny, because now after the filming I look around me at how things are made. Like when I'm putting the cardboard out for recycling - I actually feel a bit of sorrow because I know how much time and effort has gone into creating just mundane things. I've got quite a lot of respect for cardboard and glass bottles now, which makes me sound very sad, but when you watch the show you'll know what I mean.

WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR THE FUTURE?

Well, I'm never planning to have another appendix operation for sure - but I've got some potential projects that we're thinking about at the moment. Some of the shows are probably not too dissimilar to Industrial Junkie, and also I want to do some stuff which combines my car enthusiasm with the engineering and investigational side. So we might see something like that appearing in the future. And obviously I'm still a journalist - that's my bread and butter. I write the odd column every week. I usually write that in a hotel in some remote country and then spend about two hours working out how to email it to someone.

HOW IS FIFTH GEAR GOING - ARE THERE PLANS FOR A NEW SERIES?

Fifth Gear has been going very well. I've done five series of it and at the moment we're just waiting to hear back from Channel Five about when they want the next one. Hopefully we will start on another one soon.

YOU COME FROM A FAMILY OF ENGINEERS - HOW DID YOU END UP FOLLOWING THE JOURNALISM/TV ROUTE?

I was always the black sheep. I was the more arty one, which my brother just thought was a cop-out really, but I think he respects me for it now. I did A-level media, art and English, and I really enjoyed English. I wanted a job in the media but I didn't really know what. I actually never finished my degree in digital multimedia computing, which was up and coming at the time - because I didn't really enjoy it and I was doing lots of work experience for car magazines at the time. I was offered a staff junior writer role and that was 11 years ago. I quit university and went to live in Chester for three years where I wrote about vintage Volkswagens and Porsches. I gradually worked my way up the ladder to other publishing companies like EMAP and worked for more national magazines. The whole TV thing was never on the agenda - it came about purely by accident. I decided to go freelance using the contacts I'd accrued, and me and my friend Tom Ford, who is a presenter on Fifth Gear, said to me they were looking for another presenter. They wanted someone who had great knowledge of cars but wasn't necessarily known as a TV face. He set up a meeting for me with the producers and they thrust a camera in my face. They sent the show-reel off to Channel Five. A couple of months later I got a call and they said they wanted to book me on the job. I've never done any TV training, but I'm a journalist and have been trained to be nosy. You can just apply that on the screen.

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