Tribute paid to radio family in new novel
Radio 2’s Sara Cox on fellow DJ Steve Wright
Bubbly broadcaster Sara Cox felt a wave of emotion when recording a particular passage of the audiobook of her second novel, Way Back, in which a car radio is playing Steve Wright’s Sunday Love Songs. “It was a bit of an emotional ambush when I got to the Steve Wright’s love songs bit,” says the Radio 2 Teatime presenter, who had featured a nod to her much-loved colleague, who died in February, in the book.
“But obviously I will never change it. It’s lovely that’s it’s in there. It was really nice that he’s in there.”
It was Cox, 49, who choked back tears when she paid a moving tribute on her radio show soon after his death was announced.
“We were all really shocked. It was a real shaker. Nobody was expecting it at all. You just want to handle it as best you can because you want to support the listeners as well. You’ve got to remain in control, while at the same time obviously showing your emotion because you are genuinely shocked and really sad. And you can still feel it in the building a little bit.”
It’s clear her Radio 2 family mean a lot to her, as she shows in the acknowledgements.
“When I occasionally arrive at the studio, pale and subdued after a solitary morning wrestling with words, your hilarious input and funny tales never fail to put a whacking big smile on my face,” she writes.
Her personality also seeps into Way Back, which centres on a working-class northern woman, Josie, who has lived a largely middle-class life in a leafy part of north London, but moves back up north to her old family home.
The notion of moving back to her own roots is one that has been swirling around Cox’s mind for a while, she s ays, admitting that some of her protagonist’s thoughts mirror her own.
“I’d love to get a little place, to be out and have a little s mallholding, but I don’t know if I can quite persuade my Hampstead-born husband to move up north. That might be a push.”
She continues: “I guess the older you get, the further you can feel away from the place where you were raised. And 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.”
Cox turns 50 later this year, but said she had a massive ‘not 50th’ birthday party last year, so 50 won’t feel like a milestone, and in any case, she’s not worried about ageing, she says.
“I feel like it’s a privilege to age because I’ve lost people who were way too young to go and who have left behind young kids. Thank God for ageing.”