If you want to know who to thank for Zoe Ball’s return to radio nearly two years after she quit the Radio 2 breakfast show to spend more time with her family, look no further than her daughter Nell.
“I always had a great team to support me, so I worked right through Woody [her son] and Nell being youngsters as I knew they were looked after,” Ball recalls. “But when Nell was about to go into her GCSEs, I thought it was a good year to step back and be there for her as a mum. It’s been brilliant. She’s become a young woman.”
A young woman who apparently says things like, “‘Seriously, Mum, when are you going back to work?’”
You can understand Nell’s concern. She will be aware that Ball’s default is grafting. Since she first appeared on television and radio in the 1990s – on Radio 1, where, in 1997, she became the first woman to present its breakfast show, and on TV as presenter of shows like , Top of the Pops and – Ball has been one of our busiest broadcasters.
She’s presented the Brit Awards, Children in Need, and she narrates BBC Three’s . Her stint on in 2005, in which she came third, begat a decade from 2011 presenting its spin-off show . She has appeared on , and, more recently, Who Do You Think You Are?. At Radio 2, she was the “Saturday girl”, covering slots at breakfast (2009 to 2012), mid-afternoon (2017 to 2019) and finally lunchtime (2025) with nearly six years presenting the UK’s most popular weekday breakfast show in between (2019 to 2025). She was its first female host and, apart from Chris Evans, the only person to present the breakfast shows on both Radio 1 and Radio 2.
“Leaving the breakfast show was hard because I loved it, but it just felt like the right time,” Ball says, not just referring to Nell’s GCSEs. In early 2024, Ball’s mother Julia, from whom she was estranged for much of her childhood, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died three months later.
“When Mum got sick, it was such a shock because she felt very young for her years. She was 75 and was so active, so much fun and lived a busy, healthy life. But we lost her in 12 weeks. It took the wind out of all of us. There are just these curveballs in life that really make you stop, think ‘OK, what’s important?’ and get everything into perspective. So I probably would have stayed longer but you never know where life is going.”
Where life went for Ball, as far as her work was concerned, was into , the podcast she co-hosts with her friend and former BBC colleague Jo Whiley. So-called because it’s about music and gardening and things they like, has the pair sharing their experiences, insights and wisdom on subjects as varied and intimate as grief, the menopause, Zoe’s relationship with her roses and Jo’s relationship with her sister, Frances.
I’m relieved we got to live the wild 90s without camera phones
“The thing I love about my friendship with Jo is that while we rarely see each other physically, we’d always share stuff about being a mum, our kids, our parents, our lives – and that’s what has become,” Ball says. “During Covid, I remember saying to Steve Wright about the job, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to do this’, and he said, ‘You just feel where your audience are, and you go with that instinct and just do it gently’. And you do just have to go with your instinct.
“On the radio, it was always about making it about the listeners and not whanging on too much about yourself. But part of being a broadcaster is that things in your life resonate with your listeners. [On ] we have discussed things that people are going through. It can be moving at times, and sometimes it can be very silly and very fun.”
For all that it can be silly and fun. she says, “Sometimes it’s like therapy, and I guess that’s what I’ve really missed, being away from the radio – that live interaction with listeners.”
Which brings us to Greatest Hits where she joins the line-up of BBC alumni, sandwiched between Ken Bruce and Simon Mayo, both of whom are “great mates who I adore”. “When the call came, it felt like a gorgeous gift and fabulous timing. Lots of my friends in commercial radio had said to me, ‘It’s fun out here!’”
For one thing, you don’t get your salary published as Ball did at the BBC where she was, for many years, the second highest paid presenter behind Gary Lineker. How does she feel about leaving the BBC?
“I’ve left Radio 2 but it doesn’t feel as if I’ve left-left the BBC. I’m grateful to the BBC because they changed my life on numerous occasions and looked after me. They continue to do amazing things but there is a lot of great stuff happening in commercial radio.”
So, what can we expect from Zoe Ball on Greatest Hits? “A great selection of music from the 70s, 80s, and 90s – three eras I love. I was saying to Ken recently that a lot of my record collection is from the 70s and I wish I had been at Woodstock because I feel like there’s a hippy in my heart. There’ll also be lots of audience interaction because the Greatest Hits audience is wonderful. I’m looking forward to getting to know them.”
Ball sounds genuinely excited about returning to broadcasting daily. There are only a couple of minor anxieties in her life, one in the rearview mirror and one ongoing. There is the fret of what she’s done with her “time off”. “What have I achieved? I’ve been here for my daughter. That’s enough. I’ve done some gardening and sorted out the loft.”
And then there are podcasts and their pivot to video. “I’m of the old school. I still very much like to listen to my radio,” she says, firmly. “I don’t want to watch me on the podcast.”
That aside, Ball is content with her life now. She wouldn’t like to be young today? “I couldn’t do it again,” Ball reflects. “I’m really relieved that in the 90s we got to live those lives without camera phones, without much record of the wild times. I’m grateful for the fun I had. The world can be quite a frightening place and as you get older, you lose more friends and family.
“But lots of my friends are in their 60s and turning 60 and there seems more possibility than there was before. You have to be grateful for that. I’d like to be here as long as possible for my kids and hopefully get to see some grandkids, but you just don’t know how long you’re going to get.”