Music really was the food of love for DJs Zoe Ball and her ex-husband Norman Cook… as they wooed each other with mixtapes.
Radio 2 Breakfast Show host Zoe, who was married to the Fatboy Slim and Housemartins star for 18 years, has revealed they put their relationship on track by recording songs for each other a year after they first started dating.
But her pal and fellow DJ Sara Cox predicted the pair would hit it off, even before they met on a trip to Ibiza.
Zoe, 49, explained: “Sara Cox said to me, ‘You’re gonna love Norman Cook when you meet him’. I met Norm and I did love him.
(Image: Doug Peters/EMPICS Entertainment)
“There was this bonkers, brilliant chap who played records and made people dance. He would conduct the crowd.
“I thought he was wild, free and great fun. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
“I loved the Housemartins.
“If you’d shown me a video of the Housemartins when I was 15 and said I was going to marry him – that guy in the video – I would have been like, ‘Are you crazy? Of course I’m not’.” But that is exactly what happened after the pair met.
A year later, Zoe said: “I made Norman a mixtape. Who makes a DJ a mix tape? What was I thinking? He made me one too. I still have it.”
(Image: PA Archive/PA Images)
The couple tied the knot in 1999 and had two children – Woody, 19, and Nelly, 10. They split up in 2016 but still remain good friends.
Zoe, who hosts Strictly Come Dancing spin-off It Takes Two is currently in an on-off relationship with construction boss Michael Reed.
The pair were said to have split last year but were recently spotted on a night out together.
Zoe also opened up about losing her boyfriend Billy Yates to suicide in 2017 – and described the tragedy as the “hardest thing” she’s ever dealt with.
She said: “He’d lived with depression for a huge chunk of his life. It’s so hard to sit and watch someone you love and care for struggle with mental health.
“Losing him was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to deal with in my life.”
(Image: Internet Unknown)
Cameraman Billy was 40 when he committed suicide in 2017. He and Zoe had been dating for a few months but the pair had been friends for years.
Zoe said she now wants him to be remembered for his life, not his death.
Dedicating the Frank Wilson song Do I Love You to Billy on today’s Desert Island Discs, she told host Lauren Laverne: “He brought so much into my life, so much into his family and into his friend’s lives.
“I wanted to play a piece of music for him that reflected him as a human. He loved to dance and he loved to laugh. And this track will always remind me of him.”
She added: “I don’t want people to remember him for how he died, I want people to remember Billy for how he lived his life.”
(Image: BBC)
Zoe, who has been sober for three years, also talked about her own struggles with alcohol addiction issues.
She said: “Life was quite fast and I needed to step back a little bit.
“It was all too much. I tried to step out of the marriage for a while and dragged the craziness with me.
“When you face things in your life like addictions, you find you deal with it a little bit then slip back. It took me a couple of attempts to sort that out.
“I was lucky enough to go to rehab and meet other people who had addictions.”
Desert Island Discs is on BBC Sounds and BBC Radio 4 tomorrow, at 11.15am
