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Emotional Zoe Ball fought back tears as she revealed she had an emotional breakdown following her mother’s death last year.
Zoe, 54, was forced to take time off from her BBC Radio 2 breakfast show following Julia’s passing in April 2024 after a battle with pancreatic cancer.
Late last year it was announced that Zoe would step down from her morning slot, with Scott Mills taking over from her.
Now, Zoe has opened up about her mum’s passing and the sheer impact it had on her, revealing she was forced to take time off work following a breakdown.
Speaking on her BBC podcast Dig It with Jo Whiley, Zoe said: ‘I couldn’t work.
‘I was on the floor in the kitchen. I couldn’t, I couldn’t move.
‘I had a proper emotional breakdown, you know, I haven’t really talked about it actually. But it was, yeah, it was brutal.
‘I had an amazing doctor who turned up at my door with coffee and bagels and said, “so, we need to get you some help”, and he was wonderful.’
Zoe has avoided discussing her mother’s passing publicly until now.
As she continues to grieve, the mum of two admitted she found Julia’s first birthday since her passing extremely difficult.
She explained: ‘It’s a year and a bit since we lost Mum, and I found her birthday this year, the toughest, the toughest, you know, a whole year later.
‘That was brutal. It was a week of absolute weeping, I still get quite emotional sort of talking about mum, even now.
‘But I think leaning on your loved ones is the best thing and also just not being afraid to weep. There’s a lot of crying, there’s a lot of pain that has to come out.’
Before Zoe left her breakfast show on Radio 2 she was one of the highest-paid female presenters at the BBC, taking home £950,000.
Announcing her mother’s death on social media, Zoe wrote: ‘Sleep tight dear Mama.
‘Thank you for teaching us how to love unconditionally, to always show courage and empathy, and how, even in the darkest of days, laughter is the greatest of gifts. We are bereft without you but will hold so tight to each other.’
Meanwhile, last week Zoe reflected on her early days in television and how it ‘wasn’t an option’ to say no to ‘uncomfortable’ requests by bosses.
Speaking to The Times, she recalled: ‘It’s only years later you look back and think, goodness me.
‘It was actually 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 [Cox] and I.
‘I remember going to a shoot and they’d be like, “Straddle a chair”.
‘There’d be these racks of tiny clothes, so it was quite uncomfortable, but it was, like, I’ve got to do it. There was no saying, “I don’t think she wants to do it”, you’re conditioned to think, that’s just how it is.’
