[5] After university he had a variety of jobs including digging ice tunnels for glaciologists on Monte Rosa in Switzerland; fixing roofs and teaching.

[citation needed] McNaught-Davis made his television debut in 1965 as one of the presenters of a BBC TV mountaineering programme Men Against the Matterhorn, with David Dimbleby and Christopher Brasher.

[5] Between 1975 and 1978, he presented the BBC series It's Patently Obvious, a game show in which two panels of celebrities tried to guess the purpose of unfamiliar inventions.

[5] In 2008 he was a speaker (along with Dave Allen and George Auckland) at an event entitled The BBC Micro and its legacy hosted by the Computer Conservation Society.

[10] McNaught-Davis was the first non-Swiss holder of the post president of the UIAA (International Mountaineering and Climbing Federation) between the years of 1995[11][12][13] and 2004.