When it comes to publicly funded talent, we need to learn to keep our noses out and stop assuming the worst
September 23, 2024 2:43 pm(Updated 3:10 pm)
Zoe Ball bounced back onto the airwaves this morning for her Radio 2 breakfast show after weeks of speculation as to why she was suddenly replaced by Scott Mills earlier in the summer. But where did she go? whined the usual internet trolls, insisting it was their right to know.
And as I left Broadcasting House this morning after appearing on another BBC show, the paps were lurking by the exit, ready to jostle for a photograph of a woman in jeans and an anorak, getting into her car and driving away. Because they know editors will pay for the “first photo since bombshell radio return” even though it tells us precisely nothing and is, at best, a source of annoyance to someone just leaving their place of work to go home.
They want scandal. They want drama. They want a tearful confession that gives us something salacious to gossip about because it can’t just be that she needed some time off work for private reasons.
On air, it was back to business as she kicked off the show with her usual trademark positivity and matey energy, asking the listeners to tell her what she’d missed while she was away. She joked that no, she hadn’t been to Turkey for “a new face and teeth” and picked up where she left off like a professional.
Those expecting heartfelt confessions about whatever has been going on for her the past few weeks will have been disappointed. But, judging by the internet, that’s exactly what some folks were tuning in for.
Ball is paid a lot of money – reportedly around £950,000 a year – to present shows for the BBC, including her radio show, and the corporation is, of course, still funded by the licence fee that comes out of our pockets. But I don’t think that gives the public a right to demand chapter and verse on what has taken her away from her desk.
There is an unspoken rule that anyone who works for the BBC, particularly a woman identified as a top earner, should shut up and show up when it comes to their personal life, no matter what they’re dealing with. Ball didn’t share any major bombshells about the reasons for her absence, because I don’t think she even slightly owes us that.
We know from her own posts on social media that she lost her mum to cancer this year. Anyone who has been through the loss of a parent will perhaps have some empathy around how that can impact a person. Particularly the profound pain of watching a loved one deteriorate through terminal illness. A couple of days off work and some R&R might not quite cut it.
The fact that Ball earns so much money seems to suggest to some detractors that there’s a magic number above which you become publicly accountable at all times. The “We pay your wages” mentality is, in this case, misogynistic and based entirely on the assumption that an individual is somehow trying to game the system for an easy life. She’s not an MP accepting bribes. She’s a middle-aged woman with stuff going on who needed some time to recalibrate.
It’s mean-spirited to expect infallibility from our public figures and comes from a place of hating someone because good fortune has apparently fallen into their lap. Success at the level enjoyed by Ball is always a combination of the fates aligning and hard work, never just one or the other.
It is highly unlikely that someone who has had the work ethic required to get to the top of her profession just fancied a bit of unscheduled feet-up time and called in sick.
When it comes to publicly funded talent, we need to learn to keep our noses out and stop assuming the worst every time they do something the tabloids deem worthy of comment. Ball and every other “name” who works for the BBC doesn’t owe us the contents of her soul.
Could we just start from: “I’m glad she’s back. I hope she’s OK.”
