Luke Jones
Boards and leadership audiences want their conferences chaired by someone who can interrogate a Foreign Secretary, set up an economist, and keep a panel honest without losing the room. The skill is rarer than the speaker market suggests. Most journalists prepare; few can read a stage in real time and still ask the question the audience wants asked.
Luke Jones is a BBC Radio 4 and Times Radio broadcaster and host of The Times’ daily news podcast The Story, hired by organisations to chair conferences, moderate panels, and conduct on-stage interviews on politics, economics, and current affairs.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Luke Jones
- He brings the live-broadcast discipline of BBC Radio 4’s PM, The World at One, and The World Tonight to corporate stages, where the brief is to keep a panel of senior leaders specific and on the clock.
- He is a working political and current-affairs interviewer. He has put questions to Foreign Secretaries, Shadow Cabinet ministers, and Health Ministers on air, and that experience translates directly to chairing fireside conversations with senior executives.
- As host of The Times’ daily podcast The Story, he reads a story, finds the line that matters, and lands it with an audience. That is the same job a conference chair does for a leadership offsite.
- He writes The Pitcairn Trials, an investigative podcast nominated for Best Host at the British Podcast Awards. Long-form investigative work is what makes a moderator credible when the on-stage subject becomes uncomfortable.
Biography highlights
- Host of The Story, The Times’ daily news podcast.
- BBC Radio 4 presenter: PM, The World at One, The World Tonight, Saturday Live, Profile, Front Row, Broadcasting House, Any Questions.
- BBC World Service presenter: OS, Newsday, Weekend, The Newsroom.
- Former Times Radio Breakfast presenter (Fridays and weekends, two years).
- Writer and host of The Pitcairn Trials (2025), nominated for Best Host at the British Podcast Awards; The Times five stars.
- 2017 ARIAS nomination for Best New Presenter; theatre critic for the Daily Mail; contributor to The Times and Sunday Times.
Biography
A live two-way on Radio 4’s PM gives a presenter about 90 seconds to set up the issue, ask the sharp question, and get the answer the audience needs before the next item. That is the discipline Luke Jones works in every week, across PM, The World at One, The World Tonight, and Times Radio Breakfast. It is also why organisations book him to chair their stages.
He hosts The Story, The Times’ daily news podcast, and presents OS, Newsday, and Weekend on BBC World Service. He has interviewed Foreign Secretaries, Shadow Cabinet ministers, Health Ministers, and the scientists who shaped the UK’s COVID response. The interviewing register he uses on air, polite, persistent, briefed, is what conference organisers want when a CEO sits down for a fireside or a panel needs a chair who will press past the prepared answer.
His recent investigative work, The Pitcairn Trials, was rated five stars by The Times and earned a Best Host nomination at the British Podcast Awards. The series is the work of a journalist who can hold a long, difficult story together. That long-form muscle is what separates a competent moderator from one a board will trust with a sensitive on-stage conversation.
He is the kind of presenter senior audiences listen to without being told to. The 2017 ARIAS Best New Presenter nomination came early in his career; the body of work since, daily news, podcasting, theatre criticism in the Daily Mail, has been built on the Radio 4 standard.
Key speaking topics
- Conference chairing and on-stage moderation
- Fireside interviews with senior executives
- Panel chairing on politics and current affairs
- UK and US politics
- Economics and current affairs
- Investigative journalism and storytelling
- Media, broadcasting, and the news cycle
Ideal for
- CEO conferences, leadership offsites, and town halls needing an experienced on-stage interviewer
- CHRO and communications leadership events on internal storytelling and message discipline
- Industry conferences requiring a panel chair who can press senior figures on policy, economics, or geopolitics
- After-dinner interview formats where the brief is a credible name and a steady hand
Audience outcomes
- A panel that stays on the question, with senior speakers pressed past their prepared lines
- A fireside conversation that gets to the substantive answer rather than the corporate one
- An on-stage interview shaped to the audience in the room, not the speaker’s preferred script
- A conference programme that holds together because the chair has read the brief and the room
Talks
A moderated session, run as a live interview or panel, drawing on Luke’s daily work covering Westminster, Whitehall, and global affairs.
Key takeaways:
- Why political and economic decisions land the way they do with the public, and what leaders can take from that
- How media framing shapes the reception of corporate and policy announcements
- What separates a credible spokesperson from one the press will not let go