Zoe Ball has reflected on her experiences of posing for men’s magazines during the height of her career in the 90s, admitting the photoshoots often left her feeling uneasy.
The Radio 2 presenter, 54, spoke candidly about the “ladette” era, recalling how she was booked for shoots while hosting Top of the Pops, where she presented alongside Jayne Middlemiss and Jo Whiley.
“It was very male and we just sucked it up, went with it, we were almost expected to play up to it a little bit,” the broadcaster told The Times of the “ladette” era.
“It’s only years later you look back and think, goodness me.”
She described arriving at a studio in her twenties to find “racks of tiny clothes” waiting for her before being instructed to “straddle a chair” for the cameras.
Ball admitted: “There was no saying, ‘I don’t think she wants to do it,’ you’re conditioned to think, ‘that’s just how it is.’”
The presenter added that if anyone ever suggested her teenage daughter Nelly, 15, take part in the kind of lads’ mag shoots she faced in her youth, she would be outraged.
Loaded magazine, which once featured Ball on its covers, closed in 2015 following the success of UK Feminista’s “Lose the Lads’ Mags” campaign.
Fellow titles Nuts, Zoo and FHM also shut down in the mid-2010s as demand for such publications faded.
Ball became a regular Top of the Pops host in the mid-Nineties before moving on to become the first woman to present the Radio 1 Breakfast Show solo in 1998.
In December, she stepped down from BBC Radio 2’s flagship breakfast programme in December 2024 after five years in the role to “focus on family”.
Ball recently admitted she sometimes wonders if stepping down from the show was the right choice as her teenage daughter is rarely home.
Speaking on the Parenting Hell podcast with comedians Rob Beckett and Josh Widdicombe, Ball, who is also mother to son Woody, 24, said: “I gave up work because she's going to do her GCSEs but she's never there.
“She's out with her mates. I'm like, ‘I've given up work for you.”
“I am like ‘What did I give up for?’ Yeah, I have thought about it because I've been through this a bit with Woody, but I had the joy of having Nell still around. I don't know .”
Despite this, Ball has returned to Radio 2 on the weekends and has also teamed up with Whiley for their Dig It podcast.
