Gadget Show host Jon Bentley tells Dean Walker about his four decades on television, including discovering the love-him-or-hate-him presenter who helped make Top Gear a worldwide hit, and his own transition from off-camera to on-screen
Jon Bentley had two loves as a child: tinkering with electronics and cars. He loved to collect car magazines and build radios and televisions.
Decades later, he has lost none of that enthusiasm.
“I’ve been lucky enough to have always been working within my childhood interests,” he says, “and all I can hope is that you can do the same,” says Jon.
The 62-year-old concedes that most people who stop him in the street know him from Channel 5’s The Gadget Show, which he has been hosting for 20 years. But he has been in the television industry for twice as long, working most prolifically on Top Gear.
“I’ve always been ridiculously interested in cars,” Jon says, “so after I finished university, I got an office job for Ford.”
But the nine-to-five just wasn’t the right fit for him, and he left a year later due to boredom. Not long after, he saw an advert in the Guardian: Top Gear was looking for a researcher.
This was on the original series of Top Gear, which ran from 1977 to 1998.
“I went in for an interview, and I think they were impressed with my car brochure collection, so I was hired,” he says.
Jon loved his time at Top Gear and was promoted to producer and then eventually executive producer.
Jon described the job of a producer on a show such as Top Gear as someone who would choose the items they would talk about and steer the overall production of the show.
“At the time, in the nineties, I always wanted the show to be more like old car magazines,” Jon says, “I wanted it to be more humorous and critical.”
He managed to make these changes as executive producer, perhaps most notably by introducing the show to Jeremy Clarkson.
Clarkson was working as a motoring journalist at the time. “I was impressed by Jeremy’s writing,” Jon says, as “so when I met him at an event in London, I invited him to come and meet the Top Gear team.”
As Jon progressed in Top Gear, he got more and more involved in the BBC management. He found it “less agreeable”, so left Top Gear and the BBC in 1998.
He has not been forgotten by the show though, as a corner of the Top Gear test track is still called “the Bentley Bend”.
“I absolutely still love Top Gear, and I think Jeremy did a great job with it,” Jon says. “I’m proud of what I achieved while there.”
Jon still keeps in contact with his colleagues from his time at Top Gear, including Clarkson.
“I don’t speak to Jeremy a lot, but we manage to catch up every now and then,” Jon admitted.
In the early 2000s, Jon was brought onto Channel 5’s new show “The Gadget Show” as a producer and writer.
“During the screen tests for The Gadget Show, hoping to find a host, I seemed to be the only person who could explain how to download music from a CD onto a computer, so I was asked to be a host,” Jon says.
With no experience on camera before, Jon said the transition was smooth.
“All the skills I had learnt behind the camera were easily translated,” Jon says, “so stepping on camera was surprisingly easy.”
Since the Gadget Show’s start in 2004, Jon has been a host.
The Gadget Show was renamed to Shop Smart, Save Money to cover more general consumerism, and slowly over time, Jon has been less involved behind the scenes.
“When I started on the show, I used to write and produce all of my own segments,” Jon says, “but I’m not as young and spritely as I used to be, so I mostly just show up on the day.”
Jon’s current process for a segment on Shop Smart, Save Money is a few days before the shoot, he will receive a script, he’ll make some notes and then spend one day recording.
Then, a month to six weeks later he’ll record the voice over, and then another month to six weeks later, the episode will be released.
“The one thing I can say about my career, is that I haven’t been bored for a single day in 40 years since I left Ford,” Jon says. “I’ve got to say, it’s just utterly fun to still be working within my childhood interests.”
If you’re interested in following a career like Jon’s, he doesn’t think it’s too difficult to get into.
“Just find a production you like, and write to them asking for work experience,” Jon advises. “Our production seems to take a lot of people on, and we need more young and hungry talent.”
Despite his career, nowadays Jon doesn’t watch a lot of television. “I usually find myself distracted by camera reviews and car reviews on YouTube,” he says.
But after four decades working on television, Jon is far from finished and is still just as excitable and talkative about cars and gadgets as ever.
