FEATURE:
Can You Dig It?
Zoe Ball and Jo Whiley: Life in the '90s
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I do love how…
IN THIS PHOTO: Jo Whiley and Zoe Ball host the Dig It podcast/PHOTO CREDIT: Scarlet Page
two radio queens, Zoe Ball and Jo Whiley, have teamed up for a great podcast. Though it is not brand-new, I am writing about it now because I want to tie it to a recent interview they gave to The Sunday Times. About surviving life in the 1990s. The podcast, Dig It with Jo Whiley and Zoe Ball, can be accessed here. You can also stream it on Spotify. Check out the podcast’s Instagram. They alternate the episode structure. Every other episode has the sub-header, ‘DIG IN’. This is a fairly new addition to the podcast. There has been relatively little written about if from the press. I suspect, in an age where the young, trendy and fashionable are still drooled over and people, especially women, over a certain age are seen as irrelevant or bygone, that people have skipped it on principle. However, it is a fantastic podcast with two close friends. Two incredible BBC Radio 2 broadcasters who are legendary and hugely loved, it is great to hear them chat about topics such as lawn care (as the podcast explores the home and garden) and why it is harder to make friends later in life. We know about the podcast now but, back in June, Deadline posted news about a then-untitled podcast pairing two icons of the broadcasting and T.V. worlds:
“In their first ever show together, the broadcasters and presenters will lift the curtain on the “messy and beautiful reality of living well.”
No title yet revealed, but the pod will launch mid-July, the duo engage in heartfelt and unfiltered conversations about everyday life such as discuss raising a family, cultivating gardens, home improvements, careers, fostering healthy habits and aging.
The pair have been friends and worked alongside each other for nearly three decades, primarily as DJs at the BBC, and also on classic British 1990s shows The Word and Big Breakfast. As such, Persephonica is billing the podcast as “a warm and welcoming conversation with old mates.”
Dino Sofos’ Persephonica is known for podcasts such as Miss Me?, hosted by Lily Allen and Miquita Oliver; Dua Lipa: At Your Service; and the Westminster essential Political Currency. It also created the UK’s biggest daily podcast, The News Agents, but no longer makes it following a split with UK audio giant Global, as Deadline revealed in April last year.
Two episodes will each week with special bonus content for subscribers, and the show will be fully visualised on YouTube. Special guests and close friends are expected to appear, to chat about their family life, careers, life experiences, homes and gardens.
“I’ve been part of some amazing duos over the years, but I’m not sure any will quite compare to this new adventure,” said Whiley. “Starting a podcast with one of my oldest broadcasting friends – and let’s face it, doppelgänger – Zoe, is so exciting.
“The show will open a world of conversation on topics we don’t normally discuss on air and, importantly, will bring us much closer to the listeners and fans who have made our careers so special over the last 30 years.”
“I’m so super-excited to dive into the world of podcasting with my girl Jo, I’ve got so much love and respect for her – she’s been a true lifeline,” added Ball. “Our friendship goes back 30 years, to our days on The Word and The Big Breakfast. We’ve grown up together, personally and professionally, along with our listeners”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Leckie for The Sunday Times
Dig It with Jo Whiley and Zoe Ball is very open and honest. In August, Whiley shared a tragic story of their family cat and how her husband accidentally ran it over. It is vulnerable and personal, which differs from a lot of podcasts, which are either angry, edgy, impersonal or cold. Those that go deeper and feel warmer and more heartfelt always leave a bigger impression on me. In any case, go and subscribe to the podcast and follow all the episodes. When the podcast was fresh in July, this is what The Guardian wrote about it: “BBC broadcasting besties Zoe Ball and Jo Whiley follow those who have enjoyed new freedom in the podcast world. In a breezy series, which was nearly called “Jo and Zo’s Big Bushes”, they invite listeners to ask them questions on subjects from kids to gardening, interiors, music and the menopause. What they won’t be talking about, Zoe confirms, is band members they slept with in the 90s. Sorry!”. It is a great podcast that explores hefty and serious topics but also has a lighter tone. It is not restricted to a certain age group or demographic. What struck my eye and ear is how people will ask about Whiley and Ball’s experiences when they were coming through. Back in the '90s. An era when, between them, they were hosting T.V. shows and broadcasting on the BBC, they had this fame and notoriety. Zoe Ball especially linked to the ladette culture of the time. Fellow broadcasters like Sara Cox also included. Maybe gaining a reputation as being quite hedonistic or excessive, I feel a lot of it was them being caught up in what was expected in the decade. Now, both Jo Whiley and Zoe Ball might look back at regret. Not entirely, though some fog her hazier memories, tabloid photos and headlines might still leave them cold. The reality is that life for women in the public eye in the 1990s was especially challenging and toxic. This is something that we often overlook and see through rose-tinted glasses.
Whilst we mark big album anniversaries of classics from the 1990s and have entire shows dedicated to that decade, we often overlook what it was like for women then. From artists to those behind the scenes and women working for big radio stations, they did not get the same treatment and have the same experience as many of their male contemporaries. I read an interview from The Sunday Times from Saturday (6th September). A new chat with these two great, not only were they talking about their podcast and what the brilliant Dig It with Jo Whiley and Zoe Ball is about. A big conversation was what it was like for them in the 1990s. There are some portions of the interview that I want to include:
“They met in the early 1990s when both worked at the production company Planet 24 on two of TV’s edgiest shows at the time: Channel 4’s The Big Breakfast (Ball) and the unmissable Friday-night post-pub The Word (Whiley). In 1997 Ball co-hosted Radio 1’s Breakfast Show, Whiley presented the lunchtime show. As two blondes, they joke, they’ve always been mistaken for each other.
I’d been surprised that Ball hadn’t teamed up with fellow Radio 2er Sara Cox, who in the lairy 1990s was her hard-partying “ladette” partner. “Sara already has a podcast!” Ball and Whiley shriek simultaneously, clearly horrified this will be interpreted as a dissing (indeed, Cox hosts The Teen Commandments with Clare Hamilton). When I spoke to Whiley two years ago, she told me how relieved she’d been back then — when she and Ball were regularly fronting Top of the Pops — that Ball and Cox “took one for the team” for her female cohort, by posing for lads’ mags such as Loaded.
“It was very male and we just sucked it up, went with it, we were almost expected to play up to it a little bit,” Ball reflects of the era. “It’s only years later you look back and think, goodness me. It was actually [the 46-year-old singer] Sophie Ellis-Bextor [in her memoir] that undid me, reading some of the stuff she went through and how what she could see of women in the media was Sara and I.
Yet Nineties nostalgia is tinged with Gen X guilt, for having come of age not only to a banging soundtrack, but in a period of peace and prosperity. “I find myself apologising to my kids now when they say, ‘We should have lived in the 1990s.’ I really appreciate how blessed we were to be venturing into the world then, when finding a job wasn’t that competitive really,” Whiley says.
While Ball had connections (her first job was presenting the BBC preschool show Playdays), Whiley was the daughter of a couple who ran a post office in Northamptonshire. “I just wrote letters, real actual letters and someone gave me a job. Today it’s really stressful and heartbreaking. It worries me a lot.” Nor do they buy into the “slacker” Gen Z perception. “They’re really, really hard workers, they have to say yes to anything and everything, to be the best of the best”.
IN THIS PHOTO: Zoe Ball and Jo Whiley with Jayne Middlemiss in 1996/PHOTO CREDIT: Nicky Johnston/BBC
There are mixed feelings towards the '90s. Both were very much part of an industry that treated women as objects and sexualised them at every opportunity. There was misogyny and sexism and, even though Zoe Ball and Jo Whiley did not court the same sort of controversy as some of the biggest acts of the day, they were often dragged in the papers. Or celebrated as these hard-drinking ladettes. The idea of them being asked in photoshoots to pose in a certain way or things being judged on their looks rather than their talent. That still happens today. It was, by all accounts, quite a sadly traditional and conventional experience that so many women faced. Now, with hindsight and clearer vision, we can rightly call out the attitudes and toxicity of the time. However, as they say in that interview, there were some good times. Happy memories. The revival or '90s music and new lease from bands such as Supergrass and Oasis, sort of connects them back to that decade…albeit with wiser shoulders and experience. I do think that there is still this glamourisation of the era. Zoe Ball had some turbulent and rocky experiences in the Nineties. That was made tabloid fodder. The scandalisation of women and the intrusion into their personal lives. Whilst we herald the music and culture of the time, I feel like some of the darker and dirtier elements, especially the way women were viewed and what they had to endure, is not discussed – or else seen as insignificant. However, rather than purely dwell on the lack of kindness and progressiveness of the 1990s, we can see that decade as hallowed in a way. The music that came out at the time. The fact Jo Whiley and Zoe Ball met then. Sharing their experiences of the days. Also, in the process, that will give guidance and support to many women in the public eye now that are facing scrutiny and toxicity. Intrusion and invasion of their privacy. I would urge everyone to listen to Dig It with Jo Whiley and Zoe Ball. Their remarkable friendship, shared experiences and connection makes it a compelling listen. A brilliant offering…
FROM two queens of broadcasting.