“Weird, isn’t it, the whole watch thing?” Nuts, I say. Bonkers, when you really think about it. Mr Jermaine Jenas – cherubic ex-Premier League footballer, pundit, presenter, podcaster, knife-crime campaigner, child-obesity activist and, as of the 2024 season, Formula E frontman – has logged onto our Zoom call from his magnolia-walled dressing room inside the BBC’s Broadcasting House. In less than two hours, the 41-year-old father-of-four (three daughters, one son) will co-present The One Show, a magazine-style current-affairs programme that attracts up to three million viewers each weeknight.

“Some people will look at you and then automatically look at your watch. And I don’t know if they look at it and simply go, ‘Oh, OK, I’ll take him seriously now.’ Or, ‘Oh, OK, he’s clearly into his watches; what’s he wearing?’ But I do a similar thing. I’ll always have a little glance at someone’s wrist and be like, ‘Oh, right, he’s wearing that. Cool.’”

Several years ago, Jenas was asked to interview Mr Ed Sheeran. Knowing that the comb-fearing popstar was into his watches, Jenas opted for his 18kt white-gold Patek Philippe Nautilus (a chronograph model that was released in 2016 to mark the watch’s 40th anniversary). “I thought, ‘I bet he has a look’ and literally the first thing he did, before the interview had even started, was look down and go, ‘Nice’.”

By rights, Jenas – 280 Premier League appearances, 21 England caps, PFA Young Player of the Year 2002/03 – should be bored of doing interviews. He’s now been a professional conversationalist for close to a decade, after all. When the former central-midfielder isn’t speaking to footballers for the BBC, or to racing drivers for TNT Sports, he’s recording self-improvement podcasts. When he’s not chatting to teenagers about their experiences with knife crime, he’s interviewing actor Mr Idris Elba about ways of getting the issue higher up the political agenda. Messrs George Clooney, Tom Hanks and Matt Damon; during his time on The One Show, Jenas has interviewed them all (Ms Dolly Parton impressed him the most).

Instead, during our hour-long chat, Jenas is engaged, polite and present; the consummate media professional. He “fell” into presenting, he says, but it’s the thrill of the buzz that’s kept him there. “Pressure is something I grew up with. I’ve had it my entire life. When it’s gone, you miss it. The butterflies; the adrenaline. Even going on live TV tonight – the countdown, the pressure to deliver – it’s like being in the tunnel before a game. It fills a void in me.”

From his first punditry gig in 2014, Jenas proved he was as comfortable under the studio spotlight as he was under the stadium floodlights. A decade and a half in the pressure cooker of top-tier football meant that nerves were nothing new. And what has he got to be nervous about, anyway? He’d achieved his lifetime ambition by the time he was 20.

­“I was lucky enough to live my dream to be a professional footballer. Every night I would dream about stepping out onto a football pitch. It was about playing in front of people and appearing on Match Of The Day. So, this second career, while I still put pressure on myself, it wasn’t the same as wanting to be a professional footballer. I go into rooms with an air of confidence.”

Sneakers are an obsession: “There was a wild time when I was just buying, buying, buying.” Watches are another. Jenas bought his first watch while playing for his boyhood club, Nottingham Forest. (He was raised on a nearby council estate.) “I had no money growing up. I was 16, on £42.50 a week, and I bought a DKNY. It was nothing special – but I loved it.”

When he was 18, Jenas joined Newcastle United for £5m, making him the second-most expensive teenager in British football history (Mr Robbie Keane had joined Coventry City for £6m two seasons before). “There was a jeweller who’d come to the training ground with a suitcase full of watches. He’d say, ‘Pick one for you and one for the missus.’ That’s when I bought my first proper watch – a white-gold Rolex Daytona with a blue face, blue strap and diamonds on the dial. There were times I wanted to kick on and buy a bigger watch, but I’ve always kept that one.”

Bump into Jenas in the street today, and he’ll most likely be wearing a Hublot. “I’ve got a few: a Meca-10, a couple of other Big Bangs.” He’s also a sucker for that eight-sided Audemars Piguet number. “I love the chunkiness of Royal Oaks. I’ve got a carbon-fibre Alinghi. It’s chunky, it’s sporty, it’s all black – I love it.”

Towards the end of his footballing career, Jenas started thinking about watches differently, looking at the models that appreciate, or at least hold their value. “I started getting a little savvier with the purchases I was making.” His research led him to Patek Philippe. “It’s a huge investment, obviously, but I found an ‘in’. I managed to get myself to the top of the waiting list. And if you manage to do that with Patek Philippe, you buy as many as you can.”

As well as the Nautilus, which watch-spotters will have clocked him wearing on TV, Jenas owns the 5168G “Jumbo” Aquanaut – the one with the khaki-green dial and strap, the one that became the hottest watch on the planet when it was released in 2019. It’s the Aquanaut that Jenas would choose if, for the purpose of this interview, he had to pick one watch to wear for the rest of his life. “It ticks every box. It literally covers every base.”

As for what’s missing from his collection: “My dream watch? It would have to be something from Patek Philippe’s Grand Complication collection. They’re out of this world.”

Weird, the whole watch thing. But Jenas gets it. “For me, it’s like ‘Oh, he’s into that but he’s gone for that colour; with the two-tone; on that particular face. Why did he pick that stainless-steel version over the solid gold?’ It’s all these sorts of things that I really like. It’s crazy, I’ll walk into a room and my watch will literally start a conversation.”