FEATURE:
Modern-Day Queens
PHOTO CREDIT: Rachel Joseph/Comic Relief via Getty Images
how, when it comes to artists, how the media say they are ‘returning’, when they leave a slight gap between albums and singles. The fact is they have not gone away to return, but it is this assumption that, unless you are pumping out material constantly, you are seen as inactive. Perhaps not something that applies as much to broadcasters, but there was this sense that Zoe Ball has ‘returned’ to radio when she started her Greatest Hits Radio slot recently. Even if she briefly stepped away from radio to spend time with her family, I don’t think of this as a return. She, instead, has started a new phase of her career with one of the biggest radio stations in the U.K. I have been a huge fan of hers since the 1990s. One of our very best broadcasters, I did want to feature her in this Modern-Day Queens. I could not find too many interviews recently specifically about Greatest Hits Radio, though there is one I will drop in, as it is great to hear from her in this form. Of course, most of you will know who Zoe Ball is. She has been a queen of the broadcasting world for decades. I love her podcast with fellow broadcaster Jo Whiley, Dig It. Ball started her regency at Greatest Hits Radio on 7th September. Tomorrow is the start of her second week. She has shared her excitement of working as the same station as fellow erstwhile BBC Radio 2 broadcaster, Ken Bruce. On weekdays from 1 p.m., you can find out more here. The first song Ball played was The Kiki Dee Band’s I've Got the Music in Me.
I will come to some reviews of her Greatest Hits Radio start. This beloved broadcaster sounding very much at home. I don’t think Greatest Hits Radio is where she will end her career. I can see her going to another station in years to come. She has this curiosity and passion, though she may well decide that, among friends and former colleagues, Ken Bruce and Simon Mayo, this is where she belongs. After some turbulence, loss and tragedy, it is wonderful that Zoe Ball has this incredible slot on a hugely popular radio station! I want to come to Metro and their recent interview with Zoe Ball. Someone who has been part of our lives for over three decades, everyone hopes that the coming years are filled with success, happiness and stability. It is the very least that she deserves:
“‘I’ve been very blessed in my career,’ Zoe Ball, 55, tells us while heading home from a day on site at Reading Festival.
The broadcaster and first female host of both BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 2 breakfast shows is a pioneer to say the least.
Zoe stepped down from her Radio 2 show back in December 2025, with Emma Willis stepping in to take over. Months later the TV star said she experienced ‘grief and rejection’ after missing out on landing the job of Strictly Come Dancing host.
‘Emma’s amazing, we’ve known each other for years. It’s what happens,’ she tells Metro.
‘People do shows for a while, and then someone else does a show for a while. If Claudia Winkleman hadn’t stepped aside on It Takes Two, I’d never have got to do it. If Emma Forbes hadn’t left Live & Kicking, I would never have got to do it. So, it’s just a natural progression in radio and television. It’s what happens. It’s wonderful. And you need that evolution in telly.’
Now working on Greatest Hits Radio, Zoe tells us she feels ‘really lucky’ to have sat down with some of the biggest names in the business over the last 30 years.
‘Occasionally you get people who are a bit monosyllabic or not in the mood for a chat. More of the nightmares are technical, like when the tape wasn’t running and you’ve done a really good interview and you’ve done your best work, but on the whole, I’ve talked to all sorts of amazing people that I’m proud of,’ Zoe says.
‘I suppose Madonna was quite tricky because it was a bit scary and intimidating. Some of my favourites, particularly, are Barbara Streisand, Dame Julie Andrews, and Dame Judi Dench. I call them my Holy Trinity. I love speaking to Sir Paul McCartney. He always has stories to tell and he’s really generous with his time.’
But one interview in particular is brought up time and time again. Her 1994 chat with Noel and Liam Gallagher for the BBC music show The O-Zone shortly after the release of their debut album Definitely Maybe.
‘People take the mickey out of me for that interview everywhere I go,’ she laughs.
‘And my kids always ask “Mum, what are you wearing?” I was wearing a Kangol hat and a tracksuit top!’
Reminiscing on the interview she says: ‘But they were so charismatic, both Noel and Liam. I just remember being so in awe of them. There is something about them. I haven’t interviewed them together in a long time, but whenever either of them would come on my radio show, you just knew you were going to have so much fun.
‘They’re really open and honest, brutally so sometimes. But they are great lads and I’m a huge fan. It was amazing to go and see them live last year, it was an emotional night. I’m going to a screening of the documentary soon and can’t wait. I really do adore them.’
Known for her love of music, Zoe is still a festival lover and has clearly passed that down to her two children; son Woody, 25, and daughter Nelly, 16.
‘My daughter, is going to Reading Festival for the first time this year. She’s 16 and you can’t help but worry. She’s probably bored of me telling her to hydrate and have a nap. I’ve told her it’s okay to step back from the crowd if you get a bit overwhelmed,’ she says.
‘Woody loves festivals and we’ve watched him work really hard over the last few years. He drives all over the country and does six or seven gigs in a weekend. It’s kind of in his blood. He grew up seeing how much we loved going to Glastonbury and came with us when he was very young.
‘These days I like to go to bed quite early, though, have a cheese toasty and be in bed by midnight’”.
Prior to some positive reviews for her amazing Greatest Hits Radio afternoon show, this article from The Times highlights why Ball left BBC Radio 2. I do find it unnecessary and a bit gross they mentioned her salary, as that seems irrelevant and unnecessary. However, it is never about the money for Zoe Ball. She is one of the best broadcasters in the world, and she belongs on radio. It does seem like this new position at Greatest Hits Radio offers a better work-life balance, and the opportunity to spend more time with family:
“Zoe Ball has said she is returning to the airwaves in an afternoon slot for a commercial broadcaster because it gives her the flexibility to “be a mum”.
The 55-year-old presenter announced this week that she was to present a weekday 1pm-4pm show for Bauer’s Greatest Hits Radio from September.
She quit the BBC Radio 2 Breakfast Show, for which she was paid up to £955,000, in December 2024 to allow her to focus on her family, including her 16-year-old daughter Nelly, after the death of her mother. Now that her daughter had finished her GCSE exams, Ball said that she felt ready to return to radio.
“I lost Mum and I wanted to take some time and be there for my girl because I’ve always worked. I’ve never been around. But now she is loving her freedom and is [asking] ‘Mum, why are you still here?’,” Ball said on the Dig It podcast she hosts with Jo Whiley, who hosts an evening show on Radio 2.
“I’m going to be doing an afternoon show which is a lovely shift because it means I get to be mum in the morning and mum in the evening if I need to. I can be around if she needs me.”
Ball added that her failed “long shot” attempt to present Strictly Come Dancing had also contributed to her decision. “When the dancing thing didn’t happen I was a bit like,‘What am I going to do?’,” she said. “I still need to work — I need to go back to work.”
Last month Ball admitted that she had worked through “grief and rejection” after being overlooked for the BBC1 dance show in favour of Emma Willis, Josh Widdicombe and Johannes Radebe.
She announced her decision to join Greatest Hits Radio in a The Traitors-style parody video, alongside its other presenters Simon Mayo and Ken Bruce, who both moved from Radio 2.
Mayo told his colleague in the post: “Well Ken, I never thought we’d get anyone else from the old place.”
Matt Deegan, the founder of Folder Media, a radio consultancy firm, and the host of The Media Club podcast, said that Ball was another valuable signing for Greatest Hits Radio after Bruce joined in 2023.
“Ken had a huge impact on listening figures but they have drifted a little since. Targeting more Radio 2 listeners by signing Zoe is a good way to attract more listeners in again,” Deegan said.
“Radio 2 is in a bit of flux at the moment. Sara Cox is taking over the Breakfast Show from Scott Mills and her replacement on the Drivetime show is yet to be announced. Plus, Trevor Nelson is off due to ill health.
“Whenever there is uncertainty it prompts people to switch around so it’s a good time for Greatest Hits to be doing something like this.”
Greatest Hits Radio network attracted a weekly audience of almost seven million weekly listeners, according to the latest data from radio measurement body, Rajar.
BBC Radio 2 remains the most popular station with about 12.5 million listeners over the first three months of the year. This was down by about one million people from when Ball left the Breakfast Show at the end of 2024”.
There was so much anticipation around her Greatest Hits Radio start. How she would settle and what her show would be like. This review from i News is illuminating, as they write how Zoe Ball sounds completely at ease. Far from being nervous or feeling like she can be her true self at this station, she has naturally settled in right away. Given her talent and experience, that was always been the case. Everyone so relieved and happy that she has this comfort and welcoming, loving radio home:
“Greatest Hits Radio makes no secret of the fact that a central pillar of its identity is in plundering BBC Radio 2 of its presenters – and its listeners.
Perhaps, years ago, there was a little bit of cursory evasion, about it being a place for a certain demographic who liked a certain type of music. But since Ken Bruce’s defection in 2023, a tectonic plate shift that shook the foundations of New Broadcasting House and ignited talk of “crises” and “brain drains” and ravens in towers, the station stopped bothering to pretend it was doing something radical or different and just let its success speak for itself, as with increasing inevitability more Beeb-weary DJs and more evangelistic listeners left “the other station” and never looked back.
Which is how we find Zoe Ball’s new afternoon show promoted with the distinctly un-BBC tag line: “They might have Cox, but we’ve got Ball”. It sounds both like vindication and a threat.
The announcement that Ball was to join Greatest Hits in July – the same week Sara Cox made her energising debut in Ball’s former Radio 2 breakfast slot – did not come as much of a surprise. She had left her Saturday afternoon Radio 2 show in December, had struggled balancing her family commitments with the demands of the Breakfast Show in the months before she left that in 2024, and she had spoken on her podcast with Jo Whiley earlier this year – with her usual candour and vulnerability – about the “seven stages of grief and rejection” she experienced after not getting the job hosting Strictly Come Dancing.
She has of course been nothing but gracious about the BBC and her former station (for all her “ladette” history, she has always been an effusive personality), but there had just been the air of a rut about her – the suggestion that she felt overdue some kind of change. “I’ve tidied out the loft, I’d done all my runs to the tip. The garden is OK and I am slightly going a little bit mad,” she told The Times this weekend.
Greatest Hits, for the listener at least, is the opposite of change. Ball’s show comes after Bruce’s – “I’m so thrilled to be his radio neighbour once again” – and before Simon Mayo’s; it is punctuated with trailers for programmes from people like Paul Gambaccini, and one caller phoned in to point out that its title, Zoe Ball in the Afternoon, must be an homage to the late Steve Wright who was “always there, and I’m sure you’re going to carry that enthusiasm on”. Greatest Hits, in other words, is what Radio 2 sounded like until about five years ago.
And so Ball sounds exactly as you expect her to: maternal, relatable, reassuring, relentlessly positive and totally at ease around an A-list guest, the first of whom was Hugh Jackman. She was inundated with well-wishing, conspiratorial callers delighted that she has at last joined their club, which must have calmed her nerves (when 4pm rolled around she said she was a “bit sweaty”, and that she might actually sleep that night) and seemed to marvel at the playlist – which is good enough to offset any irritation from adverts, which I stopped noticing after a while.
After her opening track, Kiki Dee’s “I’ve Got the Music in Me”, she said with some relief “they really do play the best tunes around here,” and given Abba, Fleetwood Mac, Blondie, America, Bryan Ferry and Everything But the Girl followed, it was impossible to argue.
Relief, I imagine, is what most ex-Radio 2 presenters probably feel once they get behind the Greatest Hits decks. Cox sounded invigorated and in command when she launched her Radio 2 Breakfast Show this summer, and she had to: the stakes were high, as the BBC fights to prevent its listeners from fleeing to commercial stations. But no such pressure hangs over the DJs on Greatest Hits, who I understand are very well remunerated (though Ball had been the BBC’s second-highest earner) and do not bear the responsibility of preserving the future of the BBC or fulfilling its charter or representing its values or proving they are worth the licence fee.
They don’t have to move with the times. They don’t have to innovate. They don’t have to appeal to new generations. They don’t even have to play any new music. Not doing that, in fact, is exactly what has made the station so formidable.
Ball doesn’t sound like a woman unleashed on Greatest Hits – she sounds at ease. It’s familiar, it’s comfortable, it is another reminder that a “home” and community is still there for listeners who feel that endless change and schedule shake-ups and retirements and deaths and defections have left Radio 2 a strange and different place. I’m afraid the BBC probably should be worried”.
I will end with this Observer review from Miranda Sawyer. The reception on social media has been glowing. Zoe Ball has this sort of widespread admiration reserved for a special few. Even though the playlists at Greatest Hits Radio can be challenging in terms of sharp swerves and energies between songs – going between genres and extremes lacks consistency and balance -, that is a minor flaw in an otherwise triumphant show:
“Gen X treasure Zoe Ball started her new show on Greatest Hits Radio last week, sandwiched snug as a bug between fellow former Radio 2-ers Ken Bruce and Simon Mayo in the 1pm to 4pm slot. Afternoon is a good fit for Ball. Her upbeat warmth is perfect for daytime listening, and there’s less of the jagged adrenaline rush of breakfast, which occasionally made her sound frenetic in her previous show. Here she’s like the nice art teacher who stops you from getting sleepy after lunch with her bright T-shirts and silly jokes. You hope her innate quirkiness will be allowed to flourish. Commercial radio can be bland as well as cheery.
Opening with Kiki Dee’s I’ve Got the Music in Me on Monday, Ball seemed a teeny bit nervous, though by the end of the show sounded far more relaxed. On Tuesday, she got straight into things – “Let’s have some fun with some lunchtime anthems, gang!” – and banged on Rock the Casbah. That’s more like it! Her listener topic for the day, inspired by the art thieves who dropped a couple of Renoirs on their way out, was the seemingly simple “What have you dropped?” It worked excellently: listeners telling tales of dropping frozen Christmas turkeys on their toes, precious teapots on concrete floors, three-tier wedding cakes down the stairs and, more than once, their own small children.
Not everything is rosy: Greatest Hits Radio’s music policy can lead to weird emotional whiplash. Van Morrison’s Moondance, followed by DeBarge’s Rhythm of the Night and then EMF’s Unbelievable is a seasick-inducing ride, though Ball surfed it like the pro she is. Chatting to Mayo at the end of her show, she joked that there was still time for the station’s bosses to change their minds about her new job. As I Say a Little Prayer came up on the faders, we could hear Mayo commenting mildly: “Oh, I think we all know this is a very good booking.” It is”.
The brilliant Zoe Ball is one of my absolute favourite broadcasters. Her new home is at Greatest Hits Radio, and you can tell how important it is to her. Sharing the same building as Ken Bruce, there is this old friendship reignited. I can see her being at Greatest Hits Radio for many years to come. Whether there is another radio chapter after this has yet to be seen, though Ball will be in no hurry to even consider it. After some hard years and turbulent moments, let’s hope this is the start of a golden and happy phase for Zoe Ball! Her radio fans and family wish her…
ALL the very best.