My field of dreams

Radio 2 presenter Sara Cox on featuring her broadcasting pals in a novel that opens a window on her own ambitions

Bubbly broadcaster Sara Cox felt a wave of emotion while she recorded a passage of the audiobook of her second novel, Way Back, in which Steve Wright’s Sunday Love Songs show is playing on a car radio.

“It was a bit of an emotional ambush when I got to the Steve Wright’s love songs bit,” said Sara about the nod to her much-loved colleague, who died in February.

“But obviously, I will never change it. It’s lovely that’s it’s in there.”

Sara, 49, choked back tears when she paid a moving tribute on her radio show soon after Steve’s death was announced.

“We were all really shocked. It was a real shaker,” she said. “Nobody was expecting it at all.”

Fellow presenter Jeremy Vine also features in a cameo radio chat in the book. She tried to comically emulate his voice in the audiobook, and confessed: “I thought the accent would be easy but it’s impossible.”

Sara’s personality seeps into Way Back, which centres on working-class northerner Josie, who leaves behind a middle-class life in a leafy part of north London to return to her roots after her 23-year marriage ends.

It’s a thoughtful, witty family drama with complex issues in which Josie, who is approaching middle age, attempts to come to terms with the premature death of her father in a car crash when he was 38, and her mother Sandra’s refusal to talk about him.

Josie stumbles upon the old family farm in Lancashire, where she spent her childhood, and decides that to confront her future, she needs to move back.

The notion of returning to her own roots is one that has been swirling around Sara’s mind for a while. “I’d love to get a little place, to have a little smallholding,” she said. “But I don’t know if I can quite persuade my Hampstead-born husband to move up north. That might be a push.”

Despite all her ladette partying in the 90s with pal Zoe Ball, Sara loves the countryside. Today, her fix of that world comes in the form of riding her horse, Nelly, when she’s not working.

“Nelly’s really my escape and I’ve got the dogs [she has three] that take a bit of exercising and looking after,” she said.

“More and more as I get older, I wonder about when I will get around to having a little farm or a little smallholding. That’s been my dream for years.”

Sara juggles family – she has three children, Lola, 19, from her first marriage, and Isaac, 16, and Renee, 14, with her advertising executive husband, Ben Cyzer – and work, including her Teatime On Radio 2 show and her BBC Two book show Between The Covers. A third novel is also on the cards.

It’s a wonder she fits it all in but she said: “It comes in waves. I’ve had a few quiet weeks and now things are getting busy again – but I love being busy.”

Sara turns 50 this year but has no qualms about the milestone.

“I feel like it’s a privilege to age,” she said. “I’ve lost people who were way too young to go and who have left behind young kids. Thank God for ageing.”

Way Back by Sara Cox (Coronet, £16.99) is out now