Inside Zoe Ball’s quiet life in UK coastal hotspot where homes average £488,000

Zoe Ball has announced she is leaving her role as presenter of her BBC Radio 2 show and will be replaced by Emma Willis. Speaking on the show, the 55-year-old said she would be leaving in the new year but will still present a number of specials on the station.

As the presenter prepares to leave the much-loved weekend show, she may opt spend more time in Brighton and Hove where she relocated to in 2024. Zoe reportedly swapped her lavish £2million countryside pad in Newick in Sussex for a Brighton townhouse, right next door to her ex-husband, Norman Cook, better known as Fatboy Slim. The couple, who tied the knot in 1999 and had two children together, parted ways in 2016 and finalised their divorce in 2020.

A source told Mail Online at the time: “Zoe obviously got fed up with life in the country and wanted to move to somewhere a bit more lively.”

The source added: “She has become really engrossed in making her house just as she wants it and has been happily ordering furniture and buying bits and bobs to make it perfect.”

Brighton has long been one of the UK’s most trendy places to live, attracting celebrities from comedian David Walliams to celebrated DJ Fatboy Slim. House prices in Brighton and Hove have an overall average of £488,154 over the last year.

Over the years, Zoe has featured in several shows including the third series of Strictly Come Dancing as a contestant and the BBC Two spin-off show Strictly Come Dancing: It Takes Two as the host. Zoe was born in Blackpool and raised in Farnham Common, Buckinghamshire and has two children, Woody, 23, and Nelly, 14.

Zoe took over the Radio 2 breakfast from Chris Evans in 2019 and became the first female breakfast host in the show’s history.

Before moving to Brighton, Zoe Ball lived in the Sussex countryside, most recently in a large mansion in Newick, within the Ashdown Forest, after previously residing in Ditchling and Lewes.

She is understood to have resided in a property situated in the picturesque East Sussex town of Lewes. The historic town is renowned for its hillside setting and delightful independent retailers and boutiques.

Zoe relocated to the property in 2020 and personalised it with distinctive, colourful decor and opulent furnishings. The residence was constructed by Russian aristocrat Baron Vladimir de Wolff during the 1920s and featured numerous period characteristics including picture rails and lofty ceilings.

As the county town of East Sussex, Lewes boasts attractive medieval thoroughfares, historic English churches and enchanting “twittens” – the local term for narrow passages.

Surrounded by chalk cliffs, the town contains the ruins of a Norman castle and houses the former residence of Anne of Cleves, who was Henry VIII’s fourth wife.

Despite being known as Anne of Cleves House, she never actually resided there. The property was bestowed upon her following the dissolution of her marriage to Henry VIII.

The town’s fascinating heritage, attractive streets and convenient access to some of Britain’s finest beaches have established it as a highly desirable location. According to Rightmove, the average property price in Lewes over the past year was £495,979.

Semi-detached properties made up the majority of sales in Lewes last year, selling for an average price of £598,380. Terraced properties fetched an average of £494,149, while flats sold for around £255,233.

Overall, sold prices in Lewes over the last year were 13 percent lower than the previous year and similar to the 2021 peak of £498,329.

Zoe and ex-husband Cook were married for 18 years before separating in 2016 and finalising their divorce in 2020 and were known for their partying in the nineties.

In 2023, Cook praised his former partner for helping him stay grounded during the peak of his popularity. Speaking on the Changes podcast, he said: “One thing I did have to keep a lid on during that crazy time was my ego.

“While you’ve got a licence to break rules, you’ve always got a lot of people who’ll let you get away with murder. Zoe was really good for me for that, because she knew the fame game and we would sort of check each other.

“If I wasn’t respectful to people, she’d go: ‘Oi, come on, that’s not how we behave! Go back and thank them for that.'”.

“We were both quite good at keeping each other’s feet on the ground. Because it’s hard when everyone’s saying: ‘Here, have this, take this, drink this, you’re brilliant.'”.

“It’s hard to keep some kind of limit and say: ‘I am actually a human being, not a superstar.’ I think we probably saved each other a lot of bother.”