"I'm loving life off the booze": Original ladette Zoe Ball says she prefers tea and toast to big nights out

"I'm loving life off the booze": Original ladette Zoe Ball says she prefers tea and toast to big nights out

Notorious for swigging from a bottle of Jack Daniels on the way to marry her DJ fiance, Fatboy Slim, Zoe Ball is the original ladette.

She’s admitted to being so “high” while presenting on Radio 1 from Ibiza in the 90s, she found herself unable to speak.

Having quit the Breakfast Show soon after - amid fears for her mental health - Zoe later wondered if perhaps she should have simply “sobered up a bit” and carried on.

But time catches up even with the most super cool of us, especially after Zoe, 41, quit the booze three years ago.

“I’m enjoying growing older slightly more gracefully than disgracefully,” laughs the daughter of veteran kids’ presenter and cult hero Johnny Ball.

“This is not like when you’re pregnant, and you can’t have alcohol but you wish you could. It’s my choice not to drink and I’m really loving my life this way.

“Now, I go to festivals and look at the revellers and they’re young, enjoyi ng themselves, doing what young people are supposed to do and having a right old laugh.

"I think you get to a certain age and you don’t want to be rolling around in the mud in a total state.

“You know, some people still are, and they’re entitled to do that. But there comes a point when it’s time to step aside.

"I’m still having a good time, I just go to bed a bit earlier and wake up feeling great.

"Never having a hangover is brilliant, and there’s nothing better than tea and toast in bed. Or a massive slice of cake for that matter.”

"As she prepares to cover the summer music festival season for Sky Arts â€" kicking off in the Isle of Wight on Friday, Zoe, doesn’t seem bothered by the suggestion that it’s all a bit, well, middle aged.

“Is that a bad thing?” she wonders. “Yes, there are times when I think I’ve turned into a 60-year-old woman in a 40-year-old woman’s body.

"But I can still be naughty and sill y and daft. I’m not put out to pasture quite yet.”

She and husband Norman Cook were richly rewarded for their lifestyle change two years ago â€" with the birth of their daughter Nelly.

Prior to that they had struggled to conceive for many years, but after just a few months of teetotal living, Zoe fell pregnant.

Wedding Balls: Zoe leaves for her big day with a bottle of Jack Daniels

“Nell came along after we stopped drinking,” she says simply. “We were like ‘hurrah - look what happened. How brilliant’.”

With her seafront home in Brighton, famous husband, two happy healthy children, and successful TV career, Zoe is every inch the cool celebrity.

But her teenage years were very different, she remembers, having led a rather sheltered childhood.

Her first festival experience, at Glastonbury in 1994, was something of an eye-opener.

“I had such safe teenage years, I’d never really been hugely into music, I was a bit square, a bit of a geek, liked a show tune. A bit of a knob really.

“Then suddenly you’re surrounded by bands and fields and you’d go skipping off and meet all these amazing people. It was such an adventure. Like a wonderland. You’re an adult but you can have this carefree existence where you don’t wash for days.”

Having fallen in love with the festival scene, she’s never stopped going â€" although these days she does it all rather differently.

“I stay at Babington House down the road,” she chuckles. “I see my friends in their tents, going crackers. But without the drinking, we live quite a normal life these days, so we do it differently.

"I’m just like, you know what, I’m going to go back to the hotel, eat some dessert, have a little swim and then watch some of it on the telly.”

Having got back into shape thanks to a cross-trainer she keeps in the spare room, Zoe is keen to have a modicom of festival glamour on the Isle of Wight.

But she draws the line at wellies and shorts.

“I wish I could do it,” she sighs. “But there’s no way I’ll be putting my legs into a pair of shorts.

"That’s just not happening. I like to be comfortable and I like trousers so I can tuck my tummy in. I disguise it well. I love a dessert, and why not?”

Instead, she is opting for a “jazzy jacket” to complete her look.

“I’ll wear jeans to keep warm on the bottom. I’ve got a couple of capes and a great hat. I’m triying to channel a Stevie Nicks kind of thing.”

At the start of the month, Zoe was back on Radio 2 where she is the regular stand-in for Ken Bruce.

Tan-tastic: Performing on Strictly Come Dancing

And later this year she is hoping to return to Strictly Come Dancing spin-off It Takes Two, having covered for Claudia Winkleman’s maternity leave last year.

 “I’m hoping that Claudia will have another baby and need more time at home,” she jokes.

“It’s all very much under wraps but obviously I’d love to come back. I’m playing the waiting game, fingers crossed we’ll know soon.

"It’s such a joy to be part of that programme. I think if I’m not, I would cry. Or have a tantrum.

"I’d quite happily sit there with a pin and stick the diamante bits onto the costumes if I could just hear the gossip.”

She quit her Radio 2 Saturday morning show in order to spend more time with her kids at the weekends, and claims she doesn’t miss the early starts.

But there are other projects coming up at the station, and she’s happy being Bruce’s “stunt double”.

“I love Radio 2, it feels like home now. You go in, and Steve Wright pops in for a cup of tea, then Terry Wogan comes by.

"Chris Evans is my hero, I grew up with him in TV and he’s my idol really, he’s got amazing energy. It feels like a family, they’re a good bunch.”

Her grown-up attitude to everything is a far cry from the girl who had an affair (with DJ Dan Peppe) a few years after getting married, in which she briefly ran away.

Later she explained it as a “mid-life crisis” and she and Norman, 48, were fully reconciled.

These days, after his stint in rehab to quit drinking, they seem happier than ever.

“Norman is great, he’s just played the AmEx tower  in Brighton and it was so exciting, I got to go raging, which I don’t get to do much any more.

I do the Strictly stuff at home when no one’s looking, but it was good to do proper hands-up-in-the-air raving.

My friend and I were mum-da ncing behind Rizzle Kicks.

"Fit and buff": Hubby Norman Cook goes to the gym four times a week

 

“Norman was so amazing, just awesome, I was so proud of him, it was quite emotional for me actually.

"He goes to the gym four times a week and is all fit and buff. That’s the other reason I’ve got to keep fit, I have to keep up with him.”

They have developed into “hands on” parents who like to have one or other of them at home with the kids â€" son Woody is 11, while Nelly is two and a half.

They clearly love parenthood, but have no plans to extend their family further.

“We’re reckon that’s it,” she says. “We’re too old to be doing all the sleepless nights and nappies again. We’ve got a boy and a girl and we’re getting older. One of each is such a blessing, we feel so spoilt.

"I really hadn’t realised how brilliant it would be to have a girl, having had a boy and being a bit of a tomboy myself. Nell’s amazing - she dresses up and sings and dances.”

Woody, who she affectionately calls Woo, is growing up fast.

“He’s turning into a handsome teenager â€" the next thing you know it’s going to be cider and girls,” she reports with pride.

“He’s 11 going on 17 and totally gorgeous. He’s a clever little one.

"Luckily he got his grandfather’s brains - they must have skipped a generation because I just haven’t got a logical mind at all. And he’s got his dad’s intelligence â€" he tells me that quite often, ‘Luckily I take after daddy, mummy’.”

As she packs up her stuff for the Isle of Wight â€" and next month the Cambridge Folk Festival â€" she can’t help but feel happy with her lot.

“I feel like I’ve got a great balance in my life at the moment â€" I get to spend lots of time with my kids but then I get to go off and do all these really fun things. I am literally having my cake and eating it.”

The very definition of a yummy mummy...

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