Are they the ones

The old presenters handing-over of BBC1’s The One Show to a new team has been as clumsy as a baton change between runners with grease-covered hands.

Alex Jones and Jason Manford could be excused for an extra degree of nervousness as they welcome viewers to the “popular flagship show” (as the BBC press release puts it) on Monday.

Their arrival comes in the wake of a combination of presenter tantrums and managerial cock-ups that you couldn’t make up.

The five-times-a-week early evening show made its debut on BBC1 in August 2005. Seen as successor to the legendary Nationwide with “its mix of interviews, factual features and topical stories from across the UK”, the series proved popular enough for the BBC to order its return on a 52 weeks of the year basis.

Someone who didn’t come back because she was pregnant was Nadia Sawalha, who’d co-hosted with Adrian Chiles.

She’s gone on to present other daytime programmes.

Former Hear’Say singer and M&S model Myleene Klass took her seat on the sofa for a short time before she left to spend more time looking after her baby.

Chiles must have been wondering if he was wearing enough deodorant considering the swift exit of his female co-hosts.

Then Northern Irish TV presenter Christine Bleakley was drafted in to share the sofa with him. Audiences liked the partnership and the pair’s screen chemistry was credited for making a success of the show which regularly attracts audiences of more than five million and peaked at 7.4 million earlier this year.

If only Chris Evans hadn’t become the third person in the relationship. The Radio 2 breakfast show DJ was announced as the presenter of a weekly hour-long Friday edition of The One Show. Chiles was miffed, upset that he was being pushed aside after helping make a success of the show.

When ITV came calling with a rumoured £1m a year offer, Chiles jumped ship. As well as fronting the channel’s football coverage, he was named as front man for the revamped GMTV breakfast show.

The word went out that ITV wanted to reunite him and Bleakley on the GMTV sofa. She dillied and dallied about moving for weeks. Eventually a frustrated BBC did the job for her, saying they wouldn’t be renegotiating her contract. She took the ITV offer.

So they’ve swapped an early evening sofa for the morning sofa – which left The One Show looking like The No One Show.

To misquote Lady Bracknell: “To lose one presenter may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.”

It was all the more embarrassing because comedian Jason Manford had already been confirmed to replace Chiles and sit next to Bleakley. Then she made a swift exit and he started wondering about his deodorant.

Time for Plan B. The search for the new Christine Bleakley continued. After her showreel on YouTube was spotted by one of the production team, Welsh TV presenter Alex Jones auditioned and got the job.

She has ten years’ experience in TV, is fluent in Welsh and has previously presented programmes in Wales dealing with extreme sports, travel and rugby.

She is also, some insist, a dead ringer for Christine Bleakley.

She and Manford make their debut on the sofa on Monday. Whether they’ll have a chemistry that will appeal to viewers remains to be seen. It may take time.

Good double acts can’t be manufactured, they have to mature with time. If they try too hard, it’ll seem false.

Manford is convinced that the programme is bigger than the presenters, and that people care more about what’s in the programme than who’s presenting it.

That’s a good way of covering himself in case the duo prove less than dynamic.

For some, the newcomers will never replace Chiles and Bleakley no matter how good they are. But the fact remains that if viewers don’t take to him or her – or both of them – they’ll switch channels.

The nation waits: are Alex and Jason the ones that you want?

■ The One Show: Monday to Friday, BBC1, 7pm.