Griff Rhys Jones launches refurbed lifeboat at Walton-on-The-Naze

Griff Rhys-Jones met his wife, Jo, a graphic designer, while working at the BBC. He has described their first meeting by saying.....

"The day we met, I was semi-naked and she was throwing water over me."

The couple have two children, and live between homes in London (previously in Islington, now in a Grade I listed former office block in London's West End) and Holbrook, Suffolk.

The family have a chocolate-coloured Labrador called "Cadbury". Rhys Jones owns a 45-feet-long, 50-year-old blue wooden sailing yacht named Undina.

A former heavy drinker, Rhys Jones is a teetotaler: "I don't drink so going to a party can become very tedious. By about 11 o'clock everybody goes to another planet and you're not there with them, so I tend to avoid that sort of thing."