Bring it on, says Radio 2’s host as gloves come off on breakfast shift
HER PREDECESSOR, Chris Evans, had sent her a message of support, but Zoe Ball acknowledged that the gloves would come off next Monday when their radio shows go head to head.
The new host of BBC Radio 2’s breakfast show opened her first programme yesterday with the Aretha Franklin classic, Respect, and interviews with Nadiya Hussain, the former Great British Bake Off winner from Leeds, and the comedian John Cleese.
She had seen the note from Evans before going on air.
“He was just saying, ‘remember to breathe, remember to time check’. It meant a lot, actually,” she said.
The two of them were breakfast show rivals in the 1990s when she hosted on Radio 1 and he was on Virgin. Asked what it would be like next week, Ball said: “It’ll be like history repeating.
“I can’t remember what the outcome was but he’s always been so brilliant and supportive, so, yeah, bring it on.”
Ball’s debut on the radio real estate on which Sir Terry Wogan had built a mansion, marked a sea change in the Radio 2 schedule, with Sara Cox as the permanent replacement for Simon Mayo and Jo Whiley on the teatime slot from last night.
The changeover, and the hiring of Fiona Bruce as David Dimbleby’s replacement on BBC1’s Question Time, had prompted the Sheffield-born former Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson to complain that the corporation would no longer give jobs to men.
Cox, who said last week that Ball that got the job because she was a “great broadcaster” and not “because she’s got fallopian tubes”, said that having heard her friend’s show, she was feeling less nervous about her own debut.
Meanwhile, Evans, who took over the breakfast show from Sir Terry in 2010, said he would try to involve his wife and children in his new show back on Virgin Radio from next Monday.
“That’s just the way it is – it’s all hands on deck here, including the little ones,” he said.