3 days Ago
The British DJ, 54, announced her decision to leave in November, saying it was time for her to “step away from the very early mornings and focus on family”. Ball, the daughter of children’s TV presenter Johnny Ball, took over from Chris Evans almost six years ago in January 2019. From January, Scott Mills will take over and his previous weekday slot of 2pm to 4pm will be filled by Trevor Nelson.
Ball took a break from hosting her breakfast show over the summer, returning in September, and in April this year, announced the death of her mother, Julia Peckham. In November, she revealed she wakes up most days with “awful headaches” due to a health condition which causes pain in the jaw joint and surrounding muscles. She said she had a temporomandibular joint disorder, which affects the movement of the jaw, according to the NHS.
Ball was the BBC’s highest-paid on-air female presenter in 2023/24 with a salary between £950,000 and £954,999, ranking her second on the list of top-earning talent behind Gary Lineker, according to the corporation’s annual report published in July. She was previously married to Norman Cook, known as Fatboy Slim, and the pair have two children together, son Woody Fred Cook, born in 2000, and daughter Nelly May Lois Cook, who was born in 2010. Ball started as television researcher, then moved to the BBC to present Fully Booked, and has also presented on Top Of The Pops.
She was the first woman to present the BBC Radio 1 Breakfast Show solo when her co-host Kevin Greening left the show in 1998. She left in 2000 and went on to become the first permanent female breakfast show host at BBC Radio 2 almost 19 years later. From 2009 to 2012, she had presented the Saturday early morning breakfast show, returning permanently to Radio 2 in 2017 as the host of the Saturday afternoon show.
She also co-hosted Channel 4’s The Big Breakfast and BBC’s Saturday morning children’s magazine Live & Kicking – alongside Jamie Theakston for three years from 1996. The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show will air for the last time from 6.30am on Friday.
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