Responding to a question from a recently separated podcast listener, Zoe Ball has spoken about the difficulty of choosing the right time to introduce a new partner to her children. Zoe, who separated from her husband Norman "Fatboy Slim" Cook after 18 years of marriage in 2016, has two children: Woody, 25, and Nelly, 15. Zoe, 55, began dating BAFTA-winning production designer Mathieu Weekes just over a year ago. Speaking to Jo Whiley on their shared podcast Dig It, Zoe admitted she had faced the challenge of introducing new partners “quite a few times.”
She joked that her kids would ask, “Another one?” every time they found out about a new man in her life. “Introducing new partners, it's a tricky one,” she said. “You just have to go with the feeling of it. I think it's okay to have a bit of a private life that isn't part of the kids' life for a little bit.” She confessed that in the past she had perhaps been a bit too optimistic about a new relationship and had “rushed” the process of introducing them to her children: “It’s all a bit much. It's all a bit much for me. It's all a bit much for the kids.”
Zoe added: “Hopefully at some point there is someone where you think actually this person's pretty cool and they're pretty laid-back and they're not going to come in and demand to be part of your kids' lives.” She warned that the right person would understand the situation: “I'd be wary of anyone who wants this to happen too soon for you.”
Before meeting Mathieu, Zoe had dated builder-turned-model Michael Reed for around five years but ended the relationship in May 2023, telling friends that it had “run its course.”
She had also embarked on an affair with one of her husband’s friends in 2003, which resulted in a temporary split from Norman.
Zoe says it’s very tempting to think that a new lover might be “the one,” but it’s important to give a relationship time to develop before welcoming them into your home. “You might meet a few people and they might initially seem to be fabulous. You may then get to know that they're complicated because it's really hard to get to our stage of life without baggage. And initially you might meet someone and think, ‘Oh, wow. This person's too good to be true.’ And sometimes they are.”
Similarly, she said it can be difficult to walk away from an established relationship even when both people know it’s not working: “It’s so hard to leave a relationship when you know it's the right thing to do,” she said. “You feel awful for the person you've left. You feel terrible for breaking up a family. You feel guilty for your kids. It is a lot. And it does take such bravery. But when you're out and the dust starts to settle, you realise that was exactly what you needed to do.”
Reassuring the podcast listener, Zoe added: “Hopefully your kids, as they get older, you can talk to them a little bit more about why that happened. Sometimes you might not want to talk to them about that. They might not want to hear it. I think sometimes it takes for them to be adults themselves and be in relationships to realise how difficult it is.”
