Riding high

WITH creaking leather trousers Nick Knowles - wag, one of the boys, devoted father and biker - rides into town.

The dashing presenter is currently roaring across your screens on his beloved Honda CBR 600 Sport, fronting Meridian's Ridgeriders.

To be honest, turning on your television to find Nick's face beaming back at you is as much a certainty as a Labour landslide victory.

Last year he hosted more programmes than Carol Vorderman, yet failed to get the jibes she received about hogging the limelight - something he says galled the willowy mathematician deeply.

Nick may well have "free-lancers syndrome", an as-yet unrecognised condition which makes media types without full-time contracts work relentlessly because they believe they have a limited shelf-life.

The results of his labours are plain to see.

DIY SOS regularly pulls eight million viewers as Nick and the team disembowel failed home-fixer's properties, then transform them into dream abodes.

During the day the presenter's bedside manner kicks in for City Hospital as he monitors life on the wards at Southampton General.

Recently he had a day hosting Richard and Judy's This Morning, the centrepiece of ITV's daytime schedule - but refuses to be drawn on whether this could become a permanent fixture when the couple move to Channel Four.

"I get a lot of recognition in the street but they can't nail down what programme I'm from. At the moment I'm on at least once a day," he says.

"I need a new challenge all the time. I like to set myself more and more difficult targets."

Such is Nick's schedule, there's only time to chat on the phone while he's on the road (in a car not on his bike).

The familiar voice booms out of the telephone handset, cracking jokes.

You see - and I think this bears stressing - Nick Knowles is a witty man.

He's jovial and laddish exactly the same as on his programmes.

And he's one of these rare creatures for whom appearing on live television in front of millions of people is a walk in the park.

Literally seconds before presenting This Morning, Nick was idly chatting to a cameraman in the midst of a malestrom of frantic activity.

"I'm the same person on and off camera. I just love live TV and have a reputation for doing it. I have this theory that nothing can go wrong - as long as you talk it through and have a bit of fun about it."

Nick started out in television as a production editor with Meridian News.

His laid-back style of delivery was soon spotted and the rest, as they say, is

history.

Yet he does have his detractors.

A complete stranger on a towpath in Newbury for one, who detained Nick long enough to lay into him verbally.

"He said 'I can't bear you and my wife can't bear you either and we turn the TV off when you come on'," chuckles the spurned star.

But it's obvious there's not even a twinge of animosity between Nick, Bridget the designer, electrician Billy and the boys from Devon on DIY SOS.

They're a tight-knit team of whirlwind contractors.

"Bridget is mad, having a conversation with her is like walking into the twilight zone. And Billy is nicknamed the prince of darkness because he keeps on fusing the lights.

"They are both wonderful people. But 70 per cent of what we film we can't use because it's too filthy."

Despite his fame, Nick's tentative about talking to journalists and this is only the fourth interview the 38-year-old has ever given.

Now in swing of it, however, he admits to being pleasantly surprised at how painless it is: "I don't why I was so frightened. But it was mainly to protect my personal life."

And fleetingly there's a serious side to the jester - his responsibility to his two children Charlie, eight, and Tuesday, six, since he and their mother, Gill, divorced last year.

Otherwise, under all that leather and a haircut with hints of 'Lady Di' about it, is a man through which testosterone flows efficiently.

Nick Knowles appreciates the fairer sex.

"I like eyes, intelligence and bums and just the right amount of all of them.

"I've always been attracted to intelligent women. It's the challenge and they are likely to tell you when you're being a complete prat.

"I get a lot of interesting mail and some of it is quite graphic. One woman is obviously extremely learned because she has a fantastic vocabulary."

Nick, who lives in Hamble, dodges the question about whether he believes he's a sex symbol, but, when pressed, finally concedes: "I have an affect on the over 40s."

As a young man he certainly enjoyed a wild time both on and off the pitch on his very own personal rugby tour across America, ambling into the clubs he encountered, boots slung over his shoulder, requesting a game.

"Rugby is a giant family. If you can't have fun at a rugby club in Arizona you must be brain or groin dead.

"But I would give up my entire career to play rugby for England just once. Sadly I had a bit of a talent crisis."

Ridgeriders - Thursdays on Meridian at 7.30pm