Jordan North: Getting a mortgage is my biggest success

When Jordan North was trying to make it in radio, one of his first jobs at a station was answering callers. “I was given four shifts a week and was buzzing about it,” he recalls. “It meant I could pay my rent, and didn’t have to work behind a bar.” Then, one day, the editor turned around and told him he was down to two shifts. “Turns out she had given [the other two] to her friend’s son, who didn’t even want to work in radio.”

It was a useful, if brutal, lesson for the lad from Lancashire who had newly arrived in London, a city which felt both enormous and isolating. “I’d never been in such a busy place,” he says. “But it was also really lonely because I didn’t know anyone. There were times when my housemates were away and I remember thinking: ‘I’ve not seen a single person.’ It was tough. And yeah, I really had to prove myself.”

So, that is what he did. There was a Facebook group that stations would post on when they needed cover and, North says, he took every shift going. “I worked every weekend. I’d work till one in the morning and be back in at eight. It was tiring, but it gave me a good grounding.”

More than a decade on, North, now 36, is one of the most recognisable voices on British radio: a former Radio 1 presenter, one half of the arena-touring podcast juggernaut that is Help I Sexted My Boss, and now co-host of Capital Breakfast with Chris Stark and Siân Welby – a show which achieved a significant bump in its multi-million listenership when he made his much-discussed move from the BBC two years ago.

Speaking to at the end of a long day – but with the same enthusiasm, charm and warm northern accent heard on Breakfast – North says that he had long been interested in joining Capital. “When I was at the old place, we always had one eye on it,” he says. “It was like they were Man City, in that they were up and coming, then dominating things, and everyone was copying their style. I remember tuning in and thinking: ‘These guys know what they’re doing.’”

At the time, Roman Kemp was presenting with Welby and Stark. “Then I was at a wedding and Chris pulled me aside and told me Roman was leaving, and said: ‘I think you should come over.’

“I’m so glad I did – it’s so much fun and I’m absolutely loving it,” he continues, reeling off highlights from interviewing Robert De Niro to being stopped in the street by “6am Club” listeners and going viral for his comments about festive tea towels (the crux of which was informing men that they are very much decorative only). “Creatively, the bosses leave me to it, which is great.”

A big part of the joy, though, is the “genuine friendship” he has with Stark and Welby. “We see each other outside work all the time,” says North, who is hosting Capital’s Summertime Ball in the O2 this weekend. “They come to mine for barbecues, dinners or sometimes just a really good piss-up. They bring this energy you just can’t help but match.”

Given that North’s alarm goes off at quarter past four in the morning, that energy is very much needed. His days begin with a strong black coffee and “20 minutes of staring into the abyss”.

Recently, he read that, to avoid crashing later, you are supposed to wait 90 minutes after waking before having caffeine. He managed two mornings before his producer told him to stop. “He was like: ‘You need your coffee.’ I’ll admit they weren’t my best shows.”

He is off-air by 10am but is spinning so many plates that his days often don’t finish until 12 hours after they start. Still, he refuses to complain. “It’s not a proper job,” he says. “All my mates I grew up with, all my brothers, they’ve got proper hard-working jobs. I’m just an idiot who gets paid to talk.”

North was born in York into a family of three brothers, a mother who “ruled the roost” and a military father who served in the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment, meaning they moved every couple of years. “We lived everywhere from Berlin to Omagh during the Troubles,” he says. “Which is why I first became obsessed with listening to the radio, because I found that putting on the local station gives you a good idea of the area, who the people are and what they’re all about.”

But by the time the family settled in Preston when he was a teenager, radio did not seem like an obvious career. “It sounds like a Charles Dickens novel,” he says, “but I didn’t know lads like me could work in media.” His friends were becoming tradesmen, and his parents’ advice was to follow suit. “They were like: ‘If you’re not going in the army, get a trade behind you.’ Everywhere you went, everyone said: ‘Get a trade behind you, you’ll be laughing.’” So North tried bricklaying. “I did it for six months and I got sacked because I was rubbish.”

His mother eventually suggested he go to an open day at Preston College. He arrived sulky and unconvinced, then came away having signed up to a media course and “never looked back”.
After that came the long graft of local radio; his first proper show was the graveyard shift on Capital North East. He later worked at Capital Manchester, then Rock FM in Preston, the station he had spent his teenage years listening to. Eventually, he sent a demo to Radio 1, became one of the station’s regular cover presenters – its “supply teacher” – and moved to London in 2018.

Obvious success came in 2021, when he landed Radio 1’s drivetime show with Vick Hope, one of the BBC’s biggest youth radio slots – though North’s own marker of having made it was less glamorous. “For me, it was being able to get a mortgage,” he says. “Especially in London. All my mates back home had had mortgages and kids for ages, so all I wanted was my own house. That felt like success to me.”

He had ridden the high of three years on drivetime when his abrupt exit – still not entirely explained – was announced in 2024. It became big news, not least because it came at a time when a run of the BBC’s biggest presenters had left for commercial rivals, from Ken Bruce to Simon Mayo. North’s move was also picked over because of who replaced him: Jamie Laing, the former Made in Chelsea star, whose appointment raised awkward questions about whether Radio 1 had traded a working-class northern voice for its antithesis.

When I bring it up, North gives the impression of being keen not to rake over old coals. “I had a great time there,” he says. “You always think you know where your career is going, and then a new opportunity comes up, and I took it. I have absolutely no regrets.”

Still, it must have been disorienting to become a news story in that way. “It was, because I’ve always tried to keep myself to myself. But it is two years ago now. I’ve seen everyone since; they’re over it, I’m over it. Everyone’s moved on.”

Is there, I wonder, some relief at having moved out of the BBC at a time when it seems to be permanently engulfed by scandal? “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t,” he says. “But even though I work in commercial radio, I’ll always defend the BBC to the hilt. I think we need a strong BBC for everyone. And having been there, I know you’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t. But yeah, I’m glad to be out of that scrutiny.”

Now, there is plenty else to keep him busy. Recently came the news that North and Welby have joined Tom Hanks (Woody) and Tim Allen (Buzz Lightyear) in the cast of Toy Story 5, making their voice-acting debuts as Garden Gnome and Inflatable Flamingo respectively.

“When my agent called about it, he hadn’t even finished speaking and I was like: ‘Absolutely, any time, any place, any price,’” he laughs. He spent a day in the studio recording his part and is still slightly stunned by the company he will be keeping at the premiere this June.

“I remember seeing an email referring to ‘Tom and Tim’. I’m like: first-name terms? What is my life?”

Then there is Help I Sexted My Boss, the wildly funny podcast North hosts with etiquette expert William Hanson, in which the pair dispense life advice. “I always say I feel guilty, because I just tip up for three hours on a Thursday and try to make William laugh,” he says. “He tries to make me laugh, and then I go home. It’s not work – it’s just a joy. I love doing that podcast, and I like that I can be a bit ruder and naughtier than on the radio.”

The trick is remembering not to be quite so rude or naughty on breakfast radio, given that what works for Sexted is not necessarily what a parent wants coming out of the speakers at 8am on the school run – the balance of which he has not always got right. “There have been a couple of times where I’ve got a look from a producer,” he admits. “Or a kick under the desk.”

It is easy to assume, listening to him, that North is always cheeky and cheerful, but I wonder if that can be draining. “One thing I have noticed is that sometimes my social battery is a little low,” he says. “I can be in the pub on a Friday and people are like: ‘What’s up with you?’ Sometimes I feel like I’m not the best mate, because I can’t always be the best version of myself.”

North is still close to his friends from back home. Would he ever move back up North? “Yeah, definitely,” he says. “I went to a wedding recently with all my friends and came away thinking I really want to see them more. And you can get so much more for your money up there.

“That’s part of why I want to enjoy things while I’m down here. I’m under no illusions that what I’m doing now is forever. In years to come, I’ll be propping a bar up in Burnley and everyone will be going: ‘Oh, Jordan’s on his bloody radio stories again.’”

Something tells me this is unlikely. Far more likely is that North becomes the kind of long-serving radio host we call a “veteran” – and maybe even the kind he once needed. “I want to do something that helps open doors for working-class people,” he tells me. “Because we need voices from everywhere. You still need middle-class voices, but there definitely should be more working-class people in these rooms.” A beat. “Not least because we are way funnier.”

Listen to Capital Breakfast with Jordan North, Chris Stark and Sian Welby weekdays from 6am – 10am across the UK and on Global Player