The future of Sara Cox's breakfast show was thrown into question today after the DJ revealed she would quit in just over a year's time.
Her remarks in a newspaper interview provoked a PR crisis at BBC Radio 1 with publicity chiefs moving immediately to quash the story.
They interrupted Cox's morning show for urgent talks and rushed out an official statement denying she had any intention of leaving the programme.
"It will really break my heart when I say bye to breakfast... but I will be pleased to get my life back" Cox told the Sun.
"I don't find the early mornings difficult. But it would be nice to have the freedom to stay up late if I want to.
"I love doing the breakfast show, I like waking up with people and it will be hard to stop. But I will be pleased to get my life back."
A Radio 1 spokesman claimed Cox's quotes were taken out of context and said the 28-year-old DJ had recently signed a three-year contract with the station, which will run from April.
Cox is locked in to work on the breakfast show for the first year of the contract and then is contracted to Radio 1 for the next two years.
In a statement issued through the press office, Cox said: "I'm not planning on leaving the breakfast show just yet.
"I have a new three-year contract that starts in April, which will keep me doing the show for at least another year after that. And I'm not even thinking of leaving then."
Radio 1 confirmed she was entirely at liberty to leave the show at that time in order to work on other programmes for the broadcaster.
The BBC does not want to lose Cox. She pulls in 7 million listeners every day and won back the 700,000 radio listeners that switched off the show over the past year.
Cox broke into broadcasting presenting The Girlie Show on Channel 4.
She took over the Radio 1 breakfast show from Zoe Ball in April 2000 after a stint on Channel 5 and The Big Breakfast.
However, her latest TV programme, Channel 4's late-night Friday show Born Sloppy, flopped when just 700,000 viewers watched the first episode in December.
