Strictly needs Zoe Ball – but does she need Strictly?

The veteran broadcaster is a frontrunner to replace Tess and Claudia on the BBC juggernaut but, after a difficult few years, will she swap her hard-won work-life balance for one of the biggest roles in TV, asks Katie Rosseinsky

When Zoe Ball stepped down from her Saturday afternoon BBC Radio 2 show towards the end of last year, Strictly Come Dancing fans noted her announcement with interest. Could it be that Ball, a former contestant and the erstwhile presenter of spin-off show It Takes Two, was freeing up her weekend schedule to make space for the Strictly hosting gig, following the departure of leading duo Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman?

The speculation was so feverish that, on the day of Ball’s Radio 2 goodbye, Ladbrokes suspended betting on the next Strictly presenter. As a BBC darling with decades of broadcasting clout and a huge Strictly cheerleader with experience in the ballroom – she came third in the 2005 series, dancing with Ian Waite – she is a clear frontrunner for one of the biggest job vacancies in British TV.

In an interview with The Sunday Times Style earlier this month, the 55-year-old addressed the rumours for the first time. “Obviously, there’s a part of me that would love to do it,” she told the magazine. She included the sort of cheery caveats that surely become second nature to a broadcasting pro. “I will still be watching, whoever hosts,” she added, later noting that “there are so many people who would be brilliant on it”.

In fact, her response was much more self-effacing than that of her father, fellow presenter Johnny, who has been canvassing for her to get the gig in true embarrassing dad style. “I think she would love the job because she took over from Claudia on It Takes Two, and if anything, she did a better job than Claudia,” he told the Daily Express last year.

But it seems that Ball, who recently scaled back many of her work commitments after braving a gruelling few years in her personal life, appears genuinely (if tentatively) enthusiastic about the prospect of potentially hosting one of the nation’s most beloved entertainment shows. Strictly fans will surely feel the same way.

Her presenting style has all the best elements of the show’s two departing hosts. With massive BBC telethons for Comic Relief and Children in Need on her CV and all her Radio 2 breakfast show experience, Ball has the same safe-pair-of-hands quality as Daly, with a steadiness that is a prerequisite for such a behemoth of live TV. But she also has the playful humour and willingness to embrace a bit of chaos that makes Winkleman so popular, plus a sunniness that is all her own.

Twenty years on from her stint as a Strictly contestant, it feels a bit strange to think of Ball as anything other than a crowd-pleasing BBC stalwart approaching national treasure status. But before her time on the dance floor, the presenter had a very different public persona.

Zoe Ball presenting on ‘Strictly – It Takes Two’ (BBC)

Ball’s first foray into the entertainment world was as a kids’ TV host, following in the footsteps of her presenter father Johnny, a fixture on children’s TV in the 1970s and 1980s. She cropped up on shows like Top of the Pops and Channel 4’s notoriously chaotic Big Breakfast, then joined BBC Radio 1 as the co-host of its breakfast show in 1997. When her co-presenter Kevin Greening left the following year, she became the first-ever female DJ to helm that show solo.

She certainly didn’t let the early starts get in the way of partying: for Ball, the Nineties were the definition of “work hard, play hard”. She’d frequently turn up to work with a hangover after nights out with the biggest names in music and, along with friend and colleague Sara Cox, inadvertently became one of the faces of so-called “ladette” culture (largely by virtue of – imagine! – being a young woman who liked a night out). “Radio 1 saw a girl who was out living a bit of a life, and they were like, ‘We want you to go out and go to the parties and meet the bands and come in and tell us all those stories,’” she said in 2020. “I took that slightly too literally.”

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Cox would introduce her to DJ Fatboy Slim, real name Norman Cook, while they were working in Ibiza in 1997; they soon became one of the hardest-partying couples on the Cool Britannia circuit. On their wedding day in 1999, Ball was pictured clutching a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in one hand and a cigarette in the other as she headed off to the ceremony. Things quietened down a little the following year when the newlyweds welcomed their son Woody, but the pair once again found themselves the focus of tabloid scrutiny in 2003, when Ball admitted to an affair with DJ Dan Peppe.

Ball was one of the faces of ‘ladette’ culture in the Nineties (PA)

The couple briefly split up, but reconciled soon afterwards; they would go on to have another child, Nelly, in 2010 (Ball has described her daughter as her “gift of sobriety”, arriving shortly after she and Cook went sober). Six years later, in 2016, they announced their separation. It seems to have been one of the most amicable splits in showbiz: Zoe’s father has claimed they are “closer today than they were when they were married”, and last year, Cook hailed his ex as his “soulmate”.

Ball has credited competing on Strictly with bridging the gap between her early days as a radio wild child and the more sedate (but extremely successful) second act of her career. “You go from this sort of ladette, this sort of boozy person who is always in trouble,” she has said. “I went on Strictly and people did a double-take. I will always be grateful to that show.” The hosting gig, then, might feel like a full-circle moment.

I went on Strictly and people did a double take. I will always be grateful to that show

Zoe Ball

A few years later she was back on BBC radio, graduating to Radio 2 as the voice of the Saturday weekend breakfast show, and in 2011, she was welcomed back into the Strictly fold as the host of It Takes Two, when Winkleman was bumped up to the Sunday night results programme (before joining the Saturday show in 2014). The dance show has a habit of keeping it in the family when it comes to its presenting talent; It Takes Two’s current hosts Fleur East and Janette Manrara are a former contestant and former pro dancer respectively. It makes perfect sense, then, that producers in charge of replacing Daly and Winkleman might favour someone who is already part of the Strictly extended universe, as a sort of continuity candidate. With all the scandal the show has faced in recent years, this familiarity would be invaluable.

Ball could definitely be that candidate; you can imagine her as the more seasoned anchor to a younger wild card hire. She’s also one of the only people who can say that they’ve actually already had a go at steering the Strictly ship: in 2014, she hosted the show with Daly for three weeks, after Winkleman’s daughter was badly burned in an accident. Her brief stint on the show was well-received by fans; reports from back then quoted viewers on social media praising her as “effortlessly cool and funny” and “a natural”.

Zoe Ball and Tess Daly co-hosted ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ in 2014 (BBC)

By 2019, Ball had secured one of the most coveted jobs in broadcasting as the host of Radio 2’s weekday breakfast show, replacing her fellow Nineties hellraiser Chris Evans. It was a gig that ensured her the number two slot on the Beeb’s annual high earners list, behind Gary Lineker; at its peak between 2019 and 2020, her salary hovered around the £1.3m mark (although she later took a voluntary pay cut).

Perhaps the main question marks hanging over her potentially accepting the Strictly gig, though, pertain to her life off-air – and whether she’s prepared to swap her new work-life balance for an extremely demanding role.

Over the past few years, Ball has faced some devastating setbacks. In 2024, her mother Julia Peckham died just 12 weeks after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer; hollowed out by grief, Ball had to take a six-week break from radio. “I couldn’t work,” she later revealed on Dig It, the podcast she shares with fellow broadcaster Jo Whiley. “I was on the floor in the kitchen. I couldn’t, I couldn’t move. I had a proper emotional breakdown.”

Ball stepped down from the Radio 2 breakfast show and was replaced by Scott Mills (PA)

The sudden bereavement, she has said, also resurfaced the painful loss of her boyfriend Billy Yates in 2017, who died by suicide. “There is the grief-on-grief of other losses,” she told Style. “It’s really made me look back and think, right, what’s important here?” The answer seems to have been spending more time with her nearest and dearest.

In November 2024, she revealed she’d be leaving the breakfast show at the end of that year to “focus on family” and be “a mum in the mornings”. It’s thought that her 16-year-old daughter’s looming GCSEs may have also played a part in her decision to leave her Saturday Radio 2 show at the end of last year. “Just for this next six months, I need to be here,” she has said (though that timing would certainly be perfect for Strictly, which kicks off in the autumn).

And she also seems to be enjoying a new relationship with Bafta-winning production designer Mathieu Weekes, who she met in 2023 while working on ITV talent show Mamma Mia! I Have a Dream in Greece; she has dropped hints about the romance on her podcast with Wiley, referring to him only as “the lodger”.

Would Ball be willing to swap this hard-earned balance for all the long nights and heavy scrutiny that come in the Strictly host job description? We may have to wait a while to find out exactly who will be sashaying onto the dance floor come September, but one thing’s for sure: Ball would be a fab-u-lous contender.