Jonathan Ross has explained his reasons for quitting alcohol, during an appearance on Jessie and Lennie Ware’s Table Manners podcast.
The 64-year-old host of the ITV chat show The Jonathan Ross Show appeared on the popular podcast alongside his daughter, Honey Ross.
Towards the end of the episode, conversation turned to hypothetical final meals, whereupon Ross was asked about his ongoing abstinence from alcoholic beverages.
“I don’t drink,” he told the hosts. Asked if he had ever drank alcohol, Ross replied: “Yeah, I drank very, very, very successfully, for many years. I was a good drinker.
“I can still drink. I mean, I’m not an alcoholic. So I could drink. If I had a drink now, it wouldn’t mean that tomorrow I’d be thirsting for alcohol again, but I just choose not too. It’s much easier. Life is easier without it.”
He went on to explain that as he has “got older”, the TV host found himself “getting tired” more easily, and discovered that abstaining from alcohol meant “you don’t have a hangover to deal with”.
“The only downside to not drinking is you don’t really want to hang out with people as much as you used to. Because you forget what a great lubricant it is, socially.
“And when you go to a pub and everyone’s sitting around drinking, they get a drink, then they get another drink… once you’ve had two diet cokes, you really want to go home.”
He added: “I don’t miss it.”
Ross is best known to audiences for hosting The Jonathan Ross Show on ITV, and its predecessor, Friday Night with Jonathan Ross on BBC One.
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He has also featured on British screens in recent years as the host of ITV’s Academy Awards coverage, and as a judge on the reality competition The Masked Singer.
Last year, Ross denied claims that he and his wife had “instigated” his daughter’s diet.
Back in 2020, Honey, 27, made reference to “insanely toxic” diets that her parents had suggestedd when she told them she was struggling with body image issues as a teenager.
“They tried to give me solutions to a problem that I had brought to them which was me wanting to lose weight. They presented me with diets,” she said.
Speaking to The Times last April, Ross explained: “[Honey] developed some body issues when she was very young and we could see it was making her unhappy. She talked about getting fitter and going on a diet, which Jane and I tried to help her with. Crucially, though, the minute that Honey said she wanted to stop the diet, we said, ‘Great!’”
“Some of the headlines have hinted that we were the instigators of the diet, but we took our cues from Honey. We loved her dearly and we wanted her to be happy.”
