Jermaine Jenas lost his BBC jobs on the One Show and Match of the Day when he was been sacked by the corporation following complaints about his workplace conduct in 2024
Jermaine Jenas don’t believe he’ll work in TV again after accepting his career is over following the sexting scandal that saw him hauled off air. He said: “It feels the 10, 12 years I had in television is done.”
Former Match of the Day and The One Show presenter Jermaine has opened up about the explicit messages that saw his life unravel almost two years ago. The x-rated texts were uncovered in 2024 with his 14-year marriage to Ellie Penfold soon breaking down in the aftermath, leading to a divorce from the mother of his four children.
The former Tottenham Hotspur, Aston Villa and Newcastle United midfielder, who even hosted the prestigious World Cup draw in 2022, was soon sacked by the BBC following complaints about workplace conduct. He said at the time that there were “two sides to every story” but he would let his “lawyers deal with it”.
Now he has taken the steps of discussing his complete removal from broadcasting and said there seems like there’s no way back. “When I finished my football career, one of the biggest questions I had was ‘how did you do it’ from so many people.,” he said on a Facebook post at the weekend.
“There was no golden bridge for me to walk over, there was a lot of hard work and fear, and me putting myself way out of my comfort zone. I find myself in a similar situation now, it feels [like] the 10, 12 years I had in television is done. It’s been a while since I have been back on TV, which is tough to take, but it is part of the process.
“That uncertainty and that fear about what my future is looking like is back again. I have to lean back on those experiences. I’m trying to go to the gym every day, trying to wake up early and do as many positive things as possible, believing at some point something positive is going to happen.”
The former football star, who earned around £200,000 a year at the BBC for his work on the FA Cup, Match of the Day and fronting coverage at the World Cup, went on to say that there must be others who feel the same – and he wants to be a ‘guiding light’ to those people.
He added: “The mini improvements you can make in your life day in and day out to try and keep in the right direction, knowing that at some point something has to change, keep doing the right things, keep doing positive things and things will eventually drop in your favour.”
He revealed the texts happened during a bad time for him and his now ex-wife, saying the pair were in turmoil at the time. Jermaine, now said to be living in France with his new girlfriend, Anne Leplaideur, likened the texts to something out of the raunchy novel, Fifty Shades of Grey.
In the aftermath, he also lost gigs presenting for the electric racing series Formula E, numbers ad deals and despite being part of Soccer Aid coverage in previous years, ITV have since chosen to favour Dermot O’Leary and Alex Scott.
He said last year: “It was Christian Grey in text messages, put it that way. It was sexting, as simple as that, but it was initiated to me and then I responded. It wasn’t just me going out of my way and it definitely 100 per cent wasn’t ‘if you do this I will help you in your work’. There was no power element to it going on.
“There’s a lot of stuff with me and Ellie where we weren’t in the best place ourselves,” he added “And things were just spiralling a little bit. In no way is that blame. I’m fully accepting responsibility.
“I dealt with it wrong and got heavily punished for it by losing pretty much everything that I had at that time.”
The scandal culminated with an HR meeting with senior BBC execs that included reading out of the string of inappropriate texts he’d sent before his contract was officially ended.
In an interview with The Sun at the time he added: “I am ashamed, and I am deeply sorry.”
He also revealed that while on holiday he’d had another meeting with BBC execs about the texts, that he’d lied to his family about.
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