How Ball bounced back
JUST over three months ago, Zoë Ball posted a heartfelt message on social media. Marking two years of sobriety, she wrote that those years had been among the toughest of her life. Few could argue with the sentiment: during that time 47-year-old Ball not only had to navigate the fallout of the end of her 17-year marriage to DJ Norman Cook, 55, – aka Fatboy Slim – but was left heartbroken over the tragic and unexpected death of her subsequent boyfriend, TV cameraman Billy Yates.
The couple had been dating for only a few months but were, according to friends, “the loves of each other’s lives”.
Mired in grief, Ball not only took time off from her popular Saturday afternoon Radio 2 show but also dropped out of a television cookery programme, unable to face the filming commitments.
For a time, those closest to her worried whether the usually smiley broadcaster would ever bounce back – less still land one of the most sought-after roles in radio broadcasting. Yet that is exactly what has happened with the announcement this week of Zoë succeeding Chris Evans as the new presenter of Radio 2’s flagship Breakfast Show – the first female host in its 51-year history.
It is certainly a popular decision at the BBC, where Ball is universally liked. “No one really has a bad word to say about Zoë, which is not something you can say about all the talent here,” says an insider. “She’s not grand and what you see is what you get. People are genuinely pleased for her.”
The news also marks a remarkable upswing in fortune for Ball, who only recently confided in a friend that if things stayed “just the way they were” professionally – her current commitments include presenting the nightly Strictly backstage gossip show It Takes Two, alongside her Saturday afternoon radio show – then she would be happy.
“She honestly didn’t expect this,” says the friend. “She wasn’t ambitious. Chris Evans’ resignation was a shock to everyone and Zoë had no expectations.”
EXPECTATIONS or otherwise, her appointment lends Ball’s life a certain symmetry. Twenty years ago, her appointment as the first female host of The Radio 1 Breakfast Show cemented her as a leading star in the BBC firmament.
The daughter of popular children’s presenter Johnny Ball, she came to prominence on Saturday morning children’s TV programme Live & Kicking, which she co-hosted with Jamie Theakston from 1996 until 1999.
Her effervescent style brought her to the attention of radio bosses who promptly hired her for Radio 1 – no doubt keen to capitalise on Ball’s parallel role as one of the original “ladettes”, a group of hard-partying celebrities that included Denise van Outen and Ball’s fellow DJ Sara Cox, whose boisterous, boozy antics rewrote the rules on female stars.
In an image that came to encapsulate the era, Ball was pictured on the morning of her August 1999 wedding to Cook with a cigarette and bottle of Jack Daniels in her hand. The couple had met on the club circuit in Ibiza and married life did not dampen their enthusiasm for late-night partying.
Their beachfront home in Hove, East Sussex became known as party central – something that didn’t change much even after the arrival of the couple’s first child, Woody, now 17, although by then Ball had left Radio 1 to concentrate on raising her family.
However, behind the scenes Zoë was restless. “Right from the start she adored being a mum but, I think, after Woody was born, she also wanted to feel like it wasn’t the only thing that defined her,” says the insider.
Nonetheless even her tight-knit circle of friends was shocked by what happened next: less than two years after Woody was born, at the end of 2002, Zoë walked out of her marriage and set up home with DJ Dan Peppe, a friend of Cook’s.
It didn’t last. By spring she and Cook had reconciled, although Zoë later admitted that it had put a huge strain on their marriage.
“We nearly didn’t make it,” she said. “But we worked through it and we’re a really strong little family unit now.”
The arrival of daughter Nelly in 2010 seemed to rubber-stamp the couple’s renewed commitment. By then both she and Cook had gone teetotal, prompted by her husband’s decision to enter rehab the previous year.
It lasted six years, until 2014, when Ball was pictured drinking again and partying – notably without Cook. “He was never around really,” says the insider. “There were whispers at the BBC even then about how they seemed to be living separate lives.”
The rumour mill went into overdrive when, in 2015, Ball was pictured kissing a boyband singer Daily Express Saturday October 6 2018 20 years her junior by the name of TayTay Starhz at a nightclub.
In September 2016, Ball and Cook announced that they had decided to split up after coming “to the end of our rainbow”.
Towards the end of that year Zoë embarked on her relationship with Billy Yates, whom she met through mutual friends at the BBC.
Yates was credited with giving her a new lease of life in the aftermath of the breakdown of her marriage, yet their “beautiful relationship”, as Yates’ family would later describe it, was marred from the start by Billy’s mental health problems.
He had long been troubled by depression and alcohol issues and Ball was so concerned about his state of mind that in November 2016 she paid for him to have a two-week stay in The Priory.
However, it was not enough to give Yates the strength to quell his demons. Six months later he took his own life, leaving Zoë bereft.
“She was utterly devastated,” says the insider. “They were besotted with each other and Zoë thought she and Billy would spend the rest of their lives together.” His death prompted a period of soul-searching as well as proving something of a wake-up call. Earlier this year she sold her beachfront home and moved to a four-bedroom period cottage in the picturesque village of Ditchling, Sussex. “She wanted a completely fresh start,” says the insider. “She wanted to be in a place that had no old memories or associations at all.”
THAT fresh start also includes a new man, construction firm boss Michael Reed, 48, whom she is understood to have been dating since the start of the year. The couple went public in April when Ball shared photos of their holiday in Jamaica on social media.
Now news of her Radio 2 appointment cements her newfound stability – although a notable absentee from this settled domestic picture is Sara Cox, Zoë’s erstwhile partner-in-crime and bridesmaid – not to mention the woman whom some had also tipped for the Radio 2 Breakfast Show role.
The pair were as thick as thieves, but have drifted apart in recent years. It says much about the state of their relationship these days that Cox – who will be covering for Ball when she is on holiday – did not openly congratulate her old friend on her appointment, instead tweeting a tacit nod to the news with an image of a sleeping man rousing himself and clapping.
Even this, however, seems unlikely to cast much of a blight on Ball’s delight. Declaring herself “really privileged and honoured” to have been given stewardship of the Breakfast Show, she asked only that any naysayers give her a chance.
After her roller-coaster few years, only those with the stoniest of hearts would not.