Sally Jones (born 1955) is a British journalist and television presenter for sports and news. In 1986, she became the BBC's first woman sports presenter on BBC Breakfast News.
She is also a three-time world champion in real tennis, winning the singles title once and the doubles title twice.
Education Jones was born in 1955 in Coventry, Warwickshire, the daughter of a bank manager in Coleshill. She was educated at King Edward VI High School for Girls, Birmingham, and at St Hugh's College, Oxford, where she read English and won five blues and half blues for different sports including tennis, squash, netball, cricket and modern pentathlon.
She won the Sale of the Century quiz when she was aged 18 years and has since appeared on celebrity editions of Fifteen to One and The Krypton Factor. She has appeared five times on Mastermind and reached the semi-finals in 2008.
Sport Jones was Warwickshire county and British schoolgirls tennis champion (Lawn Tennis Association) and a finalist in the British Under 21 doubles championship (LTA). She played county tennis, squash (Warwickshire, Devon and South Wales squash associations), and netball (Birmingham Schools and Midlands First teams), captaining the Warwickshire senior tennis team for ten years, leading them to the County Championship in July 1997. She won the Sunday Telegraph Travel Writing Prize for an account of a tennis tour of Ireland and two Catherine Pakenham awards for women journalists.
Broadcasting and writing career During her career, Jones has been a BBC news trainee, a TV reporter at Westward Television, and a TV reporter for HTV (Wales) where she also made several documentaries, and Central TV in Birmingham where she co-presented Central News and reported on the politics show Central Lobby.Cowley, Jason. (19 August 2002) The loss of good sports broadcasters. New Statesman. She has also reported for ITN and Channel 4 News and has written columns for the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mirror and Today. In 1986, she became the BBC's first woman sports presenter on BBC Breakfast News: she claimed in 2012 that during that job she was sexually assaulted by Jimmy Savile in a lift at the BBC.
She presented for BBC Sport during the 1988 Seoul summer Olympics and for BBC World during the 1992 Barcelona summer Olympics.
Jones has also presented several series of On the Line; the daytime show The Garden Party; real tennis documentaries on Channel 4; coverage of women's British Open golf, international tennis, women's rugby, and NBA basketball on the BBC; Transworld Sport on Channel 4; and international gymnastics on ITV. She presented Woman's Hour from Birmingham (BBC Radio 4) and was a member of the BBC Radio 5 Live Wimbledon tennis commentary team during the 1990s. In 2010, she set up Sally Jones Features Ltd, a media consultancy.
She has also written several books on West English folklore, including Legends of Cornwall (1980), Legends of Devon (1981), Legends of Somerset (1983), and the Ladybird Book of Riding. In 2006, she co-wrote and edited a local history book on Georgian Warwickshire.
Real tennis In 1986, Jones took up real tennis and won the 1993 World Championship at Bordeaux, as well as two British Open and two US Open championships. She won the World Doubles Championship with Alex Garside in 1989 and 1991 and was British Open doubles finalist with Jo Iddles in 2008.
Personal life In 1989, Jones married John Wallace Grant, who was 14 years her senior. He was a civil-engineer who had worked on the Spaghetti Junction, Birmingham, in the 1970s. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 2021, and died from it in August 2026. They lived at Newbold Pacey, Warwickshire. They had two children.
Selected works Legends of Cornwall (1980) Legends of Devon (1981) Legends of Somerset (1983) The Ladybird Book of Riding
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