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Zoe Ball has shared a poignant Christmas tribute to her dearly beloved and missed family members after enduring a tragic 2024.
The former BBC Radio 2 presenter, 54, has recently stepped away from broadcasting, citing a need to spend more time with her family.
Mum-of-two Zoe also revealed her long-term battles with the chronic health condition, temporomandibular joint disorder, otherwise known as TMJ.
TMJ is a dysfunction which causes pain and tenderness in jaw joints – a nightmare condition for someone who talked to the nation for a living.
Away from the radio and her health battles, Zoe has also suffered two tragic losses this year – including that of her mum Julia, who died in April.
And the former Live and Kicking presenter paid a lovely tribute to her mum, among others she has grieved, with a set of brand new Christmas decorations.
Sunday was the first day of December 2024 and many, including Zoe, saw it as the ideal day for getting the Christmas decorations down from the loft.
Taking to Instagram, she posted five pictures, and each contained a new Christmas decoration that paid a beautiful tribute to her dearly departed close ones.
‘Miss you special people,’ she posted. The first image was a picture of her smiling mum in a glittery red heart frame, hung up on her Christmas tree.
Among the other faces who appeared on the tree was here late partner Billy Yates – a camera operator for the Antiques Roadshow – who died in 2017, aged just 40.
In the comments, many of Zoe’s 740,000 Instagram followers shared stories of their loved ones, and how Christmas 2024 was to be their first without them.
SGreeny1 said, ‘First Christmas without my mum too. I’m dreading the run up, and she’s always on my mind,’ while SherylVincentxx revealed 2024 would be the first Christmas without her husband.
Speaking about Billy Yates in 2020, three years after he took his own life, Zoe revealed that he’d ‘lived with depression’ for a very long time and that losing him was the hardest thing she’d ever had to deal with.
She told Desert Island Discs: ‘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.’
Zoe announced her mum’s death with a touching statement after Julia had died from cancer just weeks after being initially diagnosed.
The statement read: ‘Sleep tight dear Mama. Thank you for teaching us how to love unconditionally, to always show courage and empathy, and how, even in the darkest of days, laughter is the greatest of gifts.
‘We are bereft without you but will hold so tight to each other. Your grace & your smile that lit up every room you were in, will light the stars to guide us.’
Zoe has been replaced on Radio 2 by long-term BBC host Scott Mills, who joined in Radio 1 in 1998 and completed a move to Radio 2 in 2017.
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