Zoe Ball is due to present her early-morning breakfast show on BBC Radio 2 one last time.
During her penultimate show on Thursday, the British DJ, 54, gave a shout-out to the production crew and said there “is going to be a lot of people to thank on the show tomorrow”.
Earlier in the week, pop star Robbie Williams told Ball on her show: “I just want to say thank you for your services so far to the entertainment world, to BBC Radio 2, to all that have gone before you and who will come after you.
“But for you in particular, you know, the transformative thing that you do, and the kindness that you exude, is important and has been important, and will be important to people’s lives, so congrats to you.”
Ball, the daughter of children’s TV presenter Johnny Ball, began presenting The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show almost six years ago in January 2019, taking over from radio presenter Chris Evans.
She announced her decision to leave in November, saying it was time for her to “step away from the very early mornings and focus on family”.
At the time, she also said she would not be “disappearing entirely” and added: “I’ll still be a part of the Radio 2 family, with more news in the new year.”
After her last breakfast show, Ball will return to the airwaves to present two episodes of Zoe Ball’s Christmas Crooners, on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
From January, Scott Mills will take over the breakfast show and his previous weekday slot of 2pm to 4pm will be filled by Trevor Nelson.
Ball took a break from hosting her breakfast show over the summer and returned in September.
In November, after she revealed she would be leaving, she announced she had a temporomandibular joint disorder, which affects the movement of the jaw, according to the NHS.
Ball said 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”.
Ball was the BBC’s highest-paid on-air female presenter in 2023/24 with a salary between £950,000 and £954,999, ranking her second on the list of top-earning talent behind Gary Lineker, according to the corporation’s annual report published in July.
She was previously married to Norman Cook, known as Fatboy Slim, and the pair have two children together, son Woody Fred Cook, born in 2000, and daughter Nelly May Lois Cook, who was born in 2010.
Ball started as a television researcher, then moved to the BBC to present Fully Booked.
She also co-hosted Channel 4’s The Big Breakfast and BBC’s Saturday morning children’s magazine Live & Kicking – alongside Jamie Theakston for three years from 1996 and appeared as a host on Top Of The Pops.
She was the first woman to present the BBC Radio 1 Breakfast Show solo when her co-host Kevin Greening left the show in 1998.
She left in 2000 and went on to become the first permanent female breakfast show host at BBC Radio 2 almost 19 years later.
She had presented the Saturday early-morning breakfast show from 2009 to 2012, returning permanently to Radio 2 in 2017 as the host of the Saturday afternoon show.
The British DJ’s final breakfast show programme will air between 6.30am and 9.30am on Friday.
