Not news to anyone who had been listening for the previous half hour, of course. Fair play to Ball and Radio 2 for keeping it all under their respective hats. No leaks in advance. That’s rare these days.
But clearly the station has had time to work out how it’s going to rearrange the chairs. And so, after announcing that her last after six years will be on December 20, Ball revealed that her replacement will be Scott Mills.
Mills’ replacement in the afternoon will be Trevor Nelson and Nelson’s replacement on the Rhythm Nation in the evening will be DJ Spoony (who, I thought, might get the afternoon slot). And Spoony’s slot on Friday night? Sophie Ellis-Bextor.
Got all that?
For the last two years Mills has been the afternoon DJ on the station, the replacement for the late, lamented Steve Wright. But of late Mills has been sitting in on the Breakfast Show as Ball has been absent in the wake of the death of her mother. Not for the first time.
“You did the biggest favour of my career and you didn’t turn up for a show. I was doing the 4am slot and they said, ‘Do you want to carry on? Or we can call Chris Moyles?’”
Mills carried on. “And because of that I covered that breakfast show, whether it was for you, or for Sara, or Grimmy, or Chris Moyles. I did it for well over 20 years all because you overslept.”
“You’ve always filled in for someone else on the Breakfast and it’s never been your show until now,” Ball pointed out.
“Always the bridesmaid,” he proclaimed.
“But no longer, Scott,” Ball pointed out.
“The bride!” he exclaimed. “Twice in a year,” he added, in reference to his marriage to his partner Sam Vaughan in the wake of their Celebrity Race Around the World appearance.
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There will be more to say when Ball finally does hang up the Breakfast microphone but it’s worth remembering the disgusting misogyny that greeted her announcement as the new Radio 2 Breakfast host six years ago when she took over from Chris Evans. And the resulting glee when the listening figures dropped. And yet hers remains the biggest Breakfast Show on UK radio.
It also occurs to me that this is all a reminder of how quickly old I’m getting. I had already moved on from listening to Radio 1 by the time Ball was doing the Breakfast Show there. And that was some 27 years ago.
Ball has lived her life in the public eye. From late nights to marriage to Fatboy Slim to the constant headlines about her “absence” from radio this last year. She probably deserves a lie-in and a bit of peace.
It has been a week of saying goodbye and hello again on the radio. I hadn’t realised that Nihal Arthanayake was back on 5 Live until driving home on Sunday night when I turned on the radio and caught the tail end of his chat with singer Craig David for his Headliners podcast.
To be honest I’ve not been tuning into 5 Live as much since he left his weekday show. Nothing wrong with Matt Chorley who can now be found on weekday afternoons on the station, but the truth is I think you (or at least I) can have too much political coverage. And I miss Nihal’s chats with comedians.
(More seriously I can probably mount an argument that the BBC’s buying into an LBC-inspired 24-hour soap opera-fication of politics is an unhealthy development in that it supercharges a particular approach that is both personality-led and Westminster-centred and hollows out meaning and nuance and replaces it with noise. But maybe that’s for another day.)
That said, Arthanayake’s conversation with David was maybe a little too chummy, and even slightly self-regarding. But what was also striking was how emotionally open these two middle-aged men were. Right now it can feel that the clock is turning back when it comes to politics, but socially we are in a different place.
Arthanayake is a very different broadcaster to the rather patrician Michael Berkeley (aka Baron Berkeley of Knighton) who hosts Radio 3’s Private Passions. But the latter’s interviews can often be revealing and sometimes joyous as was the case when he spoke to Rupert Everett on Sunday morning.
The disappointment. Everett happily chatted away about his time as a “leather queen,” his love of Julie Andrews, the importance of Glasgow’s Citizens Theatre in his career, his spell as Hollywood’s favourite “gay best friend” and how he didn’t think he’d get along with the composer Richard Wagner as much as he liked his music.
Actually, he qualified that. He liked Wagner’s overtures. The operas, well, that was another matter.
Berkeley talked about seeing a particular Wagner performance. “I didn’t think I liked Parsifal, but I ended up in tears at the end.”
“I ended up with piles at Meistersinger …” Everett replied. “It just went on and on and on.”