Zoe Ball opened up about the difficulties she faced during her early career, including the fact she had to wear uncomfortable outfits and wasn’t able to say no to requests

Zoe Ball has opened up about the early days of her career(Image: Getty Images)

Zoe Ball has described how she felt when, at the beginning of her career, she was allegedly requested to wear “tiny” and “uncomfortable” clothes by TV bosses.

The broadcaster, 54, began her television career as a presenter on the pre-school programme Playdays, with her early jobs including Channel 4’s The Big Breakfast and BBC’s Live Kicking. She then went on to become the first female host of the Radio 1 and Radio 2 breakfast shows for the BBC – and last year, she was confirmed as the second-highest paid BBC presenter after Gary Lineker.

In November last year, months after her mum Julia passed away from cancer, she decided to step away from her long-running hosting duties to focus on her family. Zoe now enjoys a slower pace of life and co-hosts the BBC podcast Dig It with Jo Whiley.

Zoe attending the Brit Awards in 1999(Image: Getty Images)

In an interview with The Sunday Times, Zoe has spoken about her early days in the media, claiming that at the beginning of her career, “it wasn’t an option” to say no to “uncomfortable” requests during photoshoots or while working. She admitted that only years later, she realised just how much she endured – including having to wear certain outfits and not being able to turn down some requests.

Zoe said: “It’s only years later you look back and think, goodness me. It was actually Sophie Ellis-Bextor [in her memoir] that undid me, reading some of the stuff she went through and how what she could see of women in the media was Sara [Cox] and I.”

The broadcaster said she had to wear skimpy outfits(Image: Getty Images)

She added: “I remember going to a shoot and they’d be like, ‘Straddle a chair.’ There’d be these racks of tiny clothes, so it was quite uncomfortable, but it was, like, I’ve got to do it. There was no saying, ‘I don’t think she wants to do it,’ you’re conditioned to think, that’s just how it is. But now I’m thinking about my daughter; if someone asked her to do that or said something about her, I would be, like …” The Times reported that Zoe smacked her hands in a sign of dismissal.

But she said it wasn’t all negative, as she admitted she recently found some photos from a photoshoot which she loved. She shared: “I found some photos recently I’d had taken by Bob Carlos Clarke, who did the Pirelli calendar; I’m in a lace-up catsuit and boots and I thought, oh my God! They were great.”

The presenter began her career on TV(Image: Getty Images)

It comes as Zoe opened up on suffering “mum guilt” as she laid bare the difficulties of trying to raise a family while juggling a busy and successful career. During an episode of her Dig It podcast with Jo Whiley, one listener had written in to share how she had been suffering from “mum guilt” and Zoe said she felt something similar after having her first child.

Zoe met DJ Norman Quentin Cook, known professionally as Fatboy Slim, back in 1998 when the broadcaster was on a BBC Radio 1 trip to Ibiza. They got marred in Somerset the following year – and one year later, Zoe gave birth to their first child together, Woody.

Last year, Zoe quit her radio job to focus on her career(Image: Stuart C. Wilson/Getty Images)

The star had already starred on The Big Breakfast and Top of the Pops by then while her then-husband was busy DJing around the world. Zoe explained how they often relied on the help of “amazing women” to look after their children, including daughter Nelly who was born in 2010. She said: “I had a lot of guilt because there was always amazing women who helped with my kids whilst I was working, and their dad toured and was away a lot.”

The radio and TV star added that the “guilt” started to set in as she worried her kids were spending “too much time” with someone other than their parents. She opened up about the difficulties, saying: “There are so many different struggles and I get there’s mum guilt, there’s dad guilt, but most families, you know, someone has to work.” Zoe and Norman ended their marriage in 2016, after 17 years, but in 2020 she said they were still on good terms.