Zoe Ball has opened up about an unexpected twist in her personal life – revealing her teenage daughter Nelly has chosen to live mainly with her dad, just over a year after the presenter quit her lucrative BBC breakfast show to prioritise time with her children.
The broadcaster, 55, made the emotional admission on her Dig It podcast with Jo Whiley this week, confessing her once-busy family home has become “so quiet” since Nelly, 16, decided to base herself at ex-husband Norman Cook‘s place.
“Mine’s so quiet,” Zoe said of her home in East Sussex. “Nell’s based more at her dad’s now because I think she’s got to that point of, oh, can I just be in one place because all her [GCSE] revision notes are on the wall, her dad’s, and it’s like just not having to move from house to house. So she just is spending more time there now.”
Zoe stepped down from the BBC Radio 2 Breakfast Show in December 2024 – walking away from a £950,000-a-year salary – citing her desire to “focus on family” and spend more time with her daughter in the run-up to her GCSEs.
View 4 ImagesZoe Ball has revealed daughter Nelly now lives mainly with her dad, DJ Norman Cook, after walking away from £950k-a-year job to spend more time with her(Image: zoetheball/Instagram)
Despite the separation, Zoe insisted the arrangement works well, with Norman – aka Fatboy Slim – living just “around the corner” in Hove. “I can nip around any time, which is great and she can come here if she gets upset about anything. She’d be like, mum, I need you. But it’s less and less,” she admitted.
The former couple, who married in 1999 and separated in 2016, also share 25-year-old son Woody. Zoe described the siblings’ different personalities, saying: “Nell is such a daddy’s girl. And Woody is a real mummy’s boy. I don’t mean that in a derogatory way to either of them. Woody always comes to me to talk about emotional stuff.”
View 4 ImagesZoe expressed disappointment that her home in East Sussex is now ‘quieter'(Image: Getty Images)
She added: “You can’t have favourites, but often siblings think there is a favourite because sometimes there are things that you’ll do with one of your kids, that the other one’s are like, oh, you do that with them, but you don’t do that with me. I try to always give my kids equal attention, equal love.”
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View 4 ImagesZoe admits Nelly is a “daddy’s girl” while Woody is a “mummy’s boy”(Image: Instagram)
DJ Norman, 62, recently told The Mirror he was pleased to be back on stage – headlining Radio 1’s Big Weekend festival – last weekend as a break from helping Nelly with exam prep.
The 62-year-old said: “I’ve been off the road for three weeks so I’m like a caged tiger, ready to play. After weeks of revision I need to get out and kick off some cobwebs.”