Jonathan Michael Gould (born 1961 in
Kenya
)
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) is a British
television presenter and
charity fundraiser
Fundraising or fund-raising is the process of seeking and gathering voluntary financial contributions by engaging individuals, businesses, charitable foundations, or governmental agencies. Although fundraising typically refers to efforts to gathe ...
. He is best known for hosting the late-night baseball show ''
MLB on Five
''MLB on Five'' was a sports television programme on Channel 5 in the UK providing live coverage of Major League Baseball games, broadcast between 1997 and 2008. It was usually broadcast on Sunday (going into Monday morning) and Wednesday night ...
'' from 1997 until 2008, which soon built up a
cult following on the newly-launched
Channel 5.
He has been described as 'a near ubiquitous presence at London charity fundraising dinners'
Education
Gould attended
Epsom College
Epsom College is a co-educational independent school on Epsom Downs, Surrey, England, for pupils aged 11 to 18. It was founded in 1853 as a boys' school to provide support for poor members of the medical profession such as pensioners and orph ...
, where he was active in school plays and captained the college cricket team.
He left in 1979 with A-Levels in Economics, History and English, which he himself says were "highly unsatisfactory", but nonetheless obtained a place at
Durham University.
He was a member of the
Hatfield College rugby team and the Durham University Sensible Thespians (DUST) sketch group, which would later be renamed the
Durham Revue.
Career
Early career
After finishing drama school, Gould embarked on a career as an actor and landed a small role in the 1984 fantasy film and infamous
Box-office bomb
A box-office bomb, or box-office disaster, is a film that is unprofitable or considered highly unsuccessful during its theatrical run. Although any film for which the production, marketing, and distribution costs combined exceed the revenue after ...
''
Sheena'', but his appearance was cut in the editing process.
He spent the next decade working various restaurant jobs, plus stints as a motorcycle dispatch rider and house painter, with his most significant acting gig being the lead in a production of
Macbeth that went on a 3-month tour of
Japan.
In September 1994 Gould made the move into presenting after an introduction arranged by school friend
Jonathan Maitland, joining Cable 17 TV, a
Telewest
Telewest (previously Telewest Broadband and Telewest Communications) was a cable internet, broadband internet, telephone supplier and cable television provider in the United Kingdom. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange, and was also onc ...
channel for viewers in south-west London.
By 1995 he was a full-time sports presenter for Cable 17 Sport and turned freelance in May the following year, working on the sports desk for ITV
Carlton's ''
London Tonight
''ITV News London'' is a British television news service broadcast on both ITV London and the ITV Hub. It is produced by ITN.
History
London News Network
The programme launched on Monday 4 January 1993 as ''London Tonight'', after Carlton ...
'' with newsreaders
Alastair Stewart
Alastair James Stewart OBE (born 22 June 1952) is an English former journalist and newscaster. Formerly presenting for ITV News, he joined GB News as a presenter in 2021. He has won the Royal Television Society's News Presenter of the Year awa ...
and
Mary Nightingale
Mary Nightingale (born 26 May 1963) is an English journalist and television presenter, best known for presenting the '' ITV Evening News'' since 2001.
Education and early career
Nightingale was educated at St Margaret's School, an independent s ...
.
MLB on Five
He started presenting
Channel Five's coverage of live
Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...
shortly after it (and the channel) were launched in 1997, taking over from original presenter
Tommy Boyd
Timothy Leslie Boyd (born 14 December 1952), better known as Tommy Boyd, is a British radio presenter.
Television
From 1977 to 1980, Boyd was co-presenter of the ITV children's magazine programme ''Magpie'' replacing Douglas Rae. In 1981, ...
on ''
MLB on Five
''MLB on Five'' was a sports television programme on Channel 5 in the UK providing live coverage of Major League Baseball games, broadcast between 1997 and 2008. It was usually broadcast on Sunday (going into Monday morning) and Wednesday night ...
''. When the soap ''
Family Affairs
''Family Affairs'' is a British soap opera that aired on Channel 5. It debuted on 30 March 1997, the day of the launch of said channel and was the first programme broadcast on the channel. It was screened as five thirty-minute episodes per w ...
'' ended, MLB on Five became the longest surviving programme on the five schedule.
Gould is a passionate fan of the
Atlanta Braves
The Atlanta Braves are an American professional baseball team based in the Atlanta metropolitan area. The Braves compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) East division. The Braves were founded in Bos ...
and would defend them on the show with regular calls of "G'won the Braves" when they won; his favourite player is
Chipper Jones
Larry Wayne "Chipper" Jones Jr. (born April 24, 1972) is an American former professional baseball third baseman who played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Atlanta Braves from 1993 to 2012. The Braves chose Jones with the first overall p ...
. MLB coverage had been the jewel in the crown of
Five's late night schedule, and led to the station also securing late-night
NFL,
NHL
The National Hockey League (NHL; french: Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH, ) is a professional ice hockey league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the top ranked professional ...
and
NBA coverage.
Gould's approach to the sport was that of passionate supporter, constantly learning from and bouncing opinions off his co-presenters on the Five TV show. These included Todd Macklin,
Josh Chetwynd
Joshua Stephen Chetwynd (born September 11, 1971) is a British-born American journalist, broadcaster, author, sports agent and former baseball player. He has also competed in the sport of curling.
Journalism
Chetwynd has worked as a staff repor ...
,
David Lengel
David Lengel is a baseball journalist who formerly worked alongside Jonny Gould on MLB on Five, a TV programme on UK channel Five.
Career
David presented five's UK baseball coverage for a period of 18 months between 2003 and 2005. For part of thi ...
and
Mike Carlson
Michael Carlson (born March 12, 1951) is a pundit of National Football League (NFL) coverage in the United Kingdom. He worked on Channel Five's coverage of the sport from 1998–2010 and Channel 4's coverage of the sport from 2010-2015. He wa ...
, the channel's regular NFL analyst. He made liberal use of catchphrases, such as "Greetings fellow baseball nuts!" and "It's the last chance saloon!".
Gould is a fan of
Chelsea F.C.
Chelsea Football Club is an English professional football club based in Fulham, West London. Founded in 1905, they play their home games at Stamford Bridge. The club competes in the Premier League, the top division of English football ...
and rarely missed an opportunity to use them as an analogy in his baseball presenting. He also included a section on the show regarding
fantasy baseball Fantasy baseball is a game in which the participants serve as owners and general managers of virtual baseball teams. The competitors select their rosters by participating in a draft in which all relevant Major League Baseball (MLB) players are ava ...
. His nickname on Five's baseball coverage was Gouldfish, which refers to his
goldfish-like memory.
Other work
In 2004, he presented the game show
Memory Bank
A memory bank is a logical unit of storage in electronics, which is hardware-dependent. In a computer, the memory bank may be determined by the memory controller along with physical organization of the hardware memory slots. In a typical synchro ...
, taking turns with
Rachel Pierman. Since then he presented
BrainTeaser
''BrainTeaser'' was a British game show based on the original Dutch format of ''Puzzeltijd'' (English: Puzzle Time). The show was broadcast live, with phone-in viewer puzzles being announced and played during the show in addition to the studi ...
, taking turns with
Alex Lovell
Alexandra "Alex" Lovell (born 28 March 1973) is an English television presenter and voice-over artist. She has presented the BBC's regional news programme '' BBC Points West'' since 2005.
Early life
Lovell was born in Gravesend, Kent, grew up ...
throughout 2005.
Although BrainTeaser aired at 12:30pm and the baseball coverage ended in the early hours, an unanticipated clash occurred in October 2005 when Game 3 of the World Series between the
Chicago White Sox
The Chicago White Sox are an American professional baseball team based in Chicago. The White Sox compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) Central division. The team is owned by Jerry Reinsdorf, and ...
and the
Houston Astros went to 14 innings, causing the match to end at 7am UK time, resulting in his missing the train to Bristol to record BrainTeaser.
Subsequently Gould was seen on satellite channels Monte Carlo Roulette and
Sky Poker
Sky Betting & Gaming is a United Kingdom, British-based gambling company, owned by Flutter Entertainment, with headquarters in Leeds, West Yorkshire and offices in Sheffield & Solihull. Sky Betting & Gaming consists of five core brands: Sky Bet, ...
, as well as presenting the online
Fantasy Football show for
TelegraphTV's "Fantasy Football Friday".
5 live
BBC Radio 5 Live is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that broadcasts mainly news, sport, discussion, interviews and phone-ins. It is the principal BBC radio station covering sport in the United Kingdom, broadcast ...
started broadcasting a Major League Baseball audio feed each Sunday night on 4 July 2010, with Jonathan Gould hosting the broadcast and Josh Chetwynd providing analysis between innings. The series returned in 2011 with an earlier timeslot of 6pm10p.m. every Sunday, but Gould was replaced by Nat Coombs.
President's Club
In January 2018, while hosting a charity auction for the President's Club in London, he was quoted in the ''
Financial Times
The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and published digitally that focuses on business and economic current affairs. Based in London, England, the paper is owned by a Japanese holding company, Ni ...
'' as welcoming people to "the most un-PC event of the year". The event generated controversy after it was reported that women hired as waitresses for the evening were groped by male guests.
Gould, for his part, maintained he had not witnessed any inappropriate behaviour at the event.
References
External links
*
Jonathan's fantasy baseball team
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gould, Jonathan
British television presenters
1961 births
Living people
Major League Baseball broadcasters
Alumni of Hatfield College, Durham