‘I’m a bright woman...why couldn’t I save my Billy?’
TV presenter Zoe Ball says she still tortures herself over the suicide of her boyfriend Billy Yates, asking “I’m a bright woman – why couldn’t I have saved him?”
The 40-year-old cameraman took his life last year after battling with depression for many years.
He was said to have given Zoe, 47, a “new lease of life” after her split from DJ and record producer Fatboy Slim, aka Norman Cook.
Speaking publicly for the first time about her loss, she tells Radio Times, on sale today: “Billy didn’t tell me about his depression at the beginning – it’s only when you get to know someone that they really share stuff like that.
“There is a lot of stigma around mental illness. The people suffering don’t want sympathy.
“I wasn’t surprised when he eventually told me. I could see there was some sadness. I tried my best to help. But I look back and think, ‘I’m not sure I did the right thing’.
“When Billy came into my life I didn’t know how to help.
“I knew he had lived with depression for a long time but he was a big, strong guy.
“He did the Iron Man, he loved cycling 50 miles a day, he was the life and soul of the party when he was on the crew. He was so much fun.
“To see a man like that crumble was heartbreaking. He couldn’t make sense of what was happening. It was like a change of light – you saw the pain come into his eyes.
“You wanted to say, ‘Come on, stay with me. Let’s get you out of this headspace’.
“But it was harder and harder to do that.”
Last week Zoe, who fronts the spin-off show Strictly Come Dancing: It Takes Two, finished a gruelling 350-mile cycling challenge for Sport Relief to raise money for those battling mental illness.
Her journey, which took her from her birthplace in Blackpool to her home town of Brighton, via Billy’s native Darwen in Lancashire, was called the Hardest Road Home.
She hopes to raise £500,000. She added in the interview: “I’d say things like, ‘Exercise, go outside, see someone you love, it might help’. But it didn’t – and the therapy he had didn’t even touch the sides.”
Around 6,000 families lose someone to suicide in the UK every year.
It is the biggest killer of British men under 45.
Zoe said: “A lot of men I have spoken to said it’s very confusing being a modern man.
“You want to be sensitive but also strong. You can’t win. It’s hard trying to be both.”
Zoe, daughter of former TV presenter Johnny Ball, started dating Billy, who worked on Antiques Roadshow, after separating from Mr Cook, her husband of 17 years and father of her son Woody, 17, and daughter Nelly, eight.
Zoe said: “Even now I think, ‘I’m a resourceful woman, I’m a bright woman, why could I not save him?’
“Then I stop and say, ‘Everyone who loved him knew – none of us found an answer’.
“To move forward you have to accept that.”
Last month Zoe was pictured with a new boyfriend, construction firm owner Michael Reed, 47, a father of three from Kent.
A source close to Zoe said: “She is the happiest she has been in a long time – she is back in a good place.”
Billy was found dead in his flat in Putney, south-west London, in May.