Zoe Ball has revealed she was left “frozen” after discovering her car had been broken into just moments after appearing on The One Show in London.
The BBC Radio 2 host had been promoting her podcast with Jo Whiley when she returned to find her car window smashed, something she said had never happened to her before.
Speaking on her Dig It podcast, the 54-year-old admitted she may have unintentionally made herself a target by leaving a bag in full view on the passenger seat.
“Someone had smashed the front window of my car and that's never happened to me before,” she shared while updating listeners on her week.
“And it was, you know when things like that happen and you’re like, ‘oh right, uh what’ and you’re a bit frozen in time and you don’t know what to do.”
Thinking fast, Ball grabbed a festival poncho from the boot and wrapped it around the damaged door before setting off on the drive from London to Brighton.
“I wrapped it around the smashed door (and) slammed it tight and was like, ‘Right, okay, I'm probably going to have to drive from London to Brighton at 30 miles an hour’,” she continued - although her journey was far from relaxing.
“I've never heard the country show quite so loud in my ear, but you both got me home safely,” she said, crediting Whiley’s and Bob Paris’s radio programmes for keeping her going.
Thankfully, the thieves didn’t escape with anything valuable. But once she arrived home, Ball admitted the shock of the break-in hit her hard.
“I got in and had a massive cry,” she said.
The presenter reflected on how it happened, admitting: “Do you know what I did? I did a stupid thing, I was so busy running into The One Show with my suits and my bag and everything.
“And we were going to do a picture with our Spotify picture (team), which was amazing, and I left a bag on the front seat. Big no, no in London, idiot. Luckily, nothing in it except my diary.
“But it’s not my diary where I write. It’s just practical things written in...”
Her co-host Jo Whiley then recalled her own experience of being targeted in the capital while on her way to work.
She said: “Just a boy on a bike just literally snatched it from my hand.
“And then you having something [happen] like this, it's just so disappointing that people would do that to another person.”
Ball went on to describe the aftermath of the ordeal, admitting she “had a big old-fashioned cry”.
She added: “It was good, I love a big blub. The ones where you wake up in the morning and your face is a bit swollen and you're like, ‘Well, I'm glad I got that out’.”
