‘my life is richer and i do different things now’

Presenter Jo Whiley on her growing passions, health and wellness and why she never wants to stop the music

It’s been 30 years since DJ Jo Whiley first landed on BBC Radio 1, co-presenting The Evening Session. Now aged 58, she’s in a new phase of her life; preparing for an empty nest, enthusiastically gardening (she’s a little obsessed with growing pumpkins), and dealing with feelings about her own mortality.

The one thing she’s not concentrating on, though, is slowing down.

“As long as I enjoy it and people still want to dance to the songs I play and hear my voice, I’ll carry on,” she tells us. “I don’t see any reason to stop as long as I still love music and I still love talking to people. There’s an evolution with all the different things I do, and new people come along, but that doesn’t mean you’re not ‘necessary’. I mean, we still needed Steve Wright in our lives, we still needed Annie Nightingale championing music, and they always have a place in people’s lives.

“My life is richer and I do different things now. I do the gardening and everything else, but first and foremost I love the music I play and the job that I do so I don’t want to stop. I don’t know what I’d do with myself.”

Backing up Jo’s philosophy is the thing at the top of her to-do list – preparing to DJ her biggest gig yet (around 200,000 people) at the Isle of Wight festival in June.

She wants to “make an impact”, she says. “Green Day are headlining on the other stage so I need to give them a run for their money.”

We’re chatting to Jo from her converted barnhouse in Northamptonshire, where she’s lived for around 14 years with her music executive husband Steve Morton and their four children.

She was brought up in the county and returned there from London because “the more children we had, the more space we needed”, she says.

It’s clearly her happy place, full of the things she needs to stay mentally healthy and fulfilled – her two cats (a Bengal and a Ragdoll), two dogs (a faithful golden retriever and a sproodle), a stack of family board games, her garden, music and book collections and, of course, her husband of more than 30 years.