Zoe Ball 'is in a good place' says her father Johnny after she quits BBC Radio 2 breakfast show

Zoe, 54, left her programme at the end of last year, after being at the helm since 2019. She is set to return to the station in May to host a new weekly show, from 1pm to 3pm on Saturdays.

Her father, the TV presenter Johnny Ball, told Saga Magazine: “Zoe’s taken to broadcasting as well as I did – in fact, she’s done better than me. She’s earned considerably more money from it.

“Her mum died last year and she’s had various other problems, but she’s chuffed to have packed in the Radio 2 breakfast show, as she’s realised every day has 24 hours now. Her days used to start at 4am and by the time it got to midday she was knackered. She visited me recently and said: ‘I’m in such a good place’.”

In November, after Zoe revealed she would be leaving, she announced she had a temporomandibular joint disorder, which affects the movement of the jaw, according to the NHS.

She has said that she wakes up most days with “awful headaches” due to a health condition which causes pain in the jaw joint and surrounding muscles. Earlier in the year, she had announced the death of her mother Julia Peckham and said her family were “bereft”.

She was the BBC’s highest-paid on-air female presenter in 2023/24 with a salary between £950,000 and £954,999. This ranked her second on the list of top-earning talent behind Gary Lineker, according to the corporation’s annual report published in July.

Former Play School presenter Johnny has appeared in More4’s The Baby Boomers’ Guide To Growing Old, and 5’s The Terry And Gaby Show. He was the first celebrity out of Strictly Come Dancing when he competed in 2012, following Zoe becoming a finalist in 2005.

Read the full interview in Saga Magazine, or online at saga.co.uk/magazine.