TV presenter Jake Humphrey has recalled how ’embarrassing’ it was to be sacked from McDonald’s due to ‘poor communication skills.’
The former CBBC star has become somewhat of a household name, now known for hosting Champions League and Premier League football on BT Sport, and BBC Sport’s coverage of Formula 1 Grand Prix.
However, not everyone had the High Performance podcast host down as destined for the screen, he explained in conversation with the Loose Women.
Explaining how he once viewed success, he began: ‘I once looked at successful people and thought it was just a linear path, like, life is just like that. But it isn’t like that at all.’
‘You know, if I go right back to the very beginning – sacked from McDonald’s for a lack of communication skills,’ he shared, with a facial expression of disbelief.
‘All you have to say is, “Hello, what do you want?”,’ replied host Jane Moore with a laugh.
‘That’s a bit embarrassing,’ added Coleen Nolan, to which Jake agreed: ‘It was embarrassing!,’ before confessing to also failing his A-levels.
Continuing to detail his troubled upbringing, he shared: ‘Then, I had a tragic moment when my grandma sadly took her own life, when I was only a teenager.
‘That’s particularly devastating because you look at your grandparents and you think, they’ve got it sorted, they’re ok, and you know, she had her own trauma, my grandfather had a bad farming accident and she was his carer, and when he passed away it was just too much for her.’
‘That was a knock,’ he admitted.
Jake has spoken openly about his own mental health in the past, particularly what he battled while presenting children’s TV.
The Bamzooki host was on CBBC’s Against All Odds when he started to experience dark feelings, and he struggled to understand what was happening to him.
Speaking on the Blank Podcast, the former One Show host explained: ‘I genuinely believed I was mad basically, it was a really weird time.
‘I went from this super confident guy on the telly, and I was still working every day on Children’s BBC, to this guy who was not eating and getting thinner and thinner and really struggling.’
Jake recalled how he once searched the internet to see if he could ‘hire a bodyguard’ to stay with him ‘all the time’ as he was concerned he would do something ‘mad’.
‘But that in itself was madness,’ the sports pundit admitted.
The former Match of the Day host now credits his family for helping to build him back up, as he’s been married to wife, Harriet, for 12 years and they share two children – daughter Florence, six, and son Sebastian, four.
Loose Women airs weekdays at 12:30pm on ITV.
