‘Retirement? That’s just not an option for me’
Johnny Ball, father of TV presenter Zoe, tells Maureen Paton the secret of good parenting – and why he refuses to stop
Johnny Ball is showing me a photograph on his sideboard, of the Duke of Edinburgh flirting outrageously with his wife. The occasion was a Duke of Edinburgh Awards event a few years ago at which Johnny, with the comely blonde Dianne – aka Di – at his side, was due to make a speech.
“The Duke asked me what I was going to say. So I replied: ‘Well, Sir, I’m going to be telling them that I had a crush on your wife. When she was 18 and I was seven, she was in uniform and driving trucks towards the end of the war and I thought she was the most glamorous person in the world.’ He said: ‘You can’t tell them that!’ And I said: ‘Well, I think I will, Sir.’ And he said: ‘Well, in that case, I’m having her’ – and made as if to grab Di, which is why we’re all laughing.
“That’s flirting – there’s nothing wrong with it. I like flirting; it’s just being nice and spreading bonhomie, lifting people’s spirits; hopefully, Zoe got her flirtatiousness from me,” says Ball, father of the television presenter and DJ Zoe, 46, who could, according to her Strictly
Come Dancing colleagues, “flirt with
a chair”.
For many people in their 40s and 50s, Ball is a household name. He presented and wrote childhood favourites such as BBC’S Play School and Play Away, and popular science programmes such as Think of a Number. And after more than 50 years in broadcasting, he is still a contender. I’m meeting Johnny, Di and their black cocker spaniel, Holly, at their large, comfortable home (“we’re not at all showbizzy”) in a Buckinghamshire village to talk about his latest television venture: a celeb-studded
reality show, The Baby Boomers’ Guide to Growing Old, in which Johnny drives Esther Rantzen in his classy silver BMW to a ceroc dance class.
Having just turned 79, Ball is technically too old to be a boomer, but he is still such a lively twirler on the dance floor – reliving his 2012 Strictly Come Dancing days – that he qualifies as an honorary one. “I’m just so happy to still be working – retirement is not an option,” he jokes. So far, so light-hearted, but when we meet there is a sadness beyond the bonhomie. However, Ball, a devoted father of three, won’t talk about the recent suicide of Zoe’s 40-yearold boyfriend, BBC cameraman Billy Yates: “I can’t go there.” All he will say is that “Zoe is a strong character.” Ball is a grandfather of six, including to Zoe’s two children Woody, 16, and Nelly, seven, with former husband Norman Cook, aka DJ Fatboy Slim. That family sense of solidarity continues with the next generation: Woody, currently in the throes of his GCSE exams, posted a touching tribute to Billy on Instagram the day after his funeral, adding protectively: “I’ll look after her,” in a reference to his mother – to which she replied: “Woo, my best boy. You make me the proudest mama ever.”
Zoe, who returned to her Radio 2 afternoon show at the start of this month, also took to social media to thank her followers for their sympathy over “my dear, dear Billy”.
Her father does concede that “Norman is supportive”. Cook lives in the same Brighton street as Zoe – the pair split last year – and Ball has always made his fondness for his son-in-law abundantly clear.
“She’ll get back on an even keel – as we all have to do,” he adds, his final word on the subject. He tells me that she has already filmed most of The Big Family Cooking Showdown – BBC One’s replacement for The Great British Bake Off – with 2015 Bake Off winner Nadiya Hussain, and chefs Rosemary Shrager and Giorgio Locatelli.
“Both Zoe and Norman learnt to cook from my wife,” says Ball. “It’s a huge thing for Zoe, the BBC’S biggest show of the autumn.”
While Johnny and I talk in his quiet sitting-room, Di discreetly nips out to walk Holly. A baby boomer herself at 67, Di was in her early 20s when she became a second mother to two-year-old Zoe after her mother, Julia, left in 1972. Ball doesn’t want to go into detail but admits that, “to be fair to my first wife” he played a part in the break-up of their marriage.
He and Di went on to have Nick, an artist and screenwriter, and Dan, who runs his own design business. All three, plus their families, get together at the Ball family house every summer.
But even his many years as a star of children’s television can’t have prepared Ball for the forensic focus on Zoe’s life and pioneering career as the first female host of Radio 1’s breakfast show. In the late Nineties, she found herself portrayed as the poster girl for the so-called “ladette” culture of drinking and clubbing.
“Zoe played it the way she wanted to play it,” says Ball. “She didn’t agree with the double standard, so when the media labelled her a ladette, she said “fine” and went along with it.
“The day she married Norman, she appeared with a bottle of whiskey and a stetson hat – and why? Because her mates said: ‘The press are outside’, so she said: ‘Let’s give them something’. It was done purely for effect: the cork never came out.”
Zoe is the absolute image of her father, with the same cheeky, facesplitting grin. “She once wailed at me – ‘I’ve got your big nose and big mouth … but I’m a girl!” he says.
He sounds like an ideal dad, never breathing down his children’s necks but always there when they need him. Indeed, all his years of putting the fun into educational programmes have given him a particular empathy for young people and what he calls the “incredible” pressures they face from endless exams and also social media. It is why he believes that “you’ve got to give them time: it’s wrong to put so much stress on education at 16. Much better to start looking at 23 or 24 at what you really want to be when it’s
‘I like flirting, there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just being nice and lifting spirits.’
still not too late to learn, especially since we live longer now.”
The only child of a foundry worker and a mill girl, Ball is convinced that there are as many opportunities for youngsters today as there were for him – unlike his father’s generation.
“My father would have been a funnier comedian than me, but he never got a chance,” he says.
The former Butlin’s Redcoat doesn’t believe it was easier to break into showbusiness in his day; plenty of hard graft has always been needed. Yet he does think today’s youngsters can end up with unrealistic expectations after becoming hooked on television talent shows that peddle an impression of overnight success.
“Kids today need to know the opportunities are there for them, but it requires all the effort you can give it; you have got to work.”
It’s a message he clearly managed to pass on to his own offspring. With Father’s Day next Sunday, I ask Ball what he has found the best thing about being a dad. “The pride in them – which makes up for all the worries along the way,” he says.