Sarah Cox: ‘I came out of maternity leave early when I wanted to pursue a career’

Sarah Cox is about to give me an honest answer to a question when she suddenly stops. “It’s really hard for women to say that!” I just asked if there was a time when she thought her broadcasting career was over. “Not really, no, I always believed,” she began. Now for the hard part: “Because I knew I was…pretty good.” She tries not to flinch that this will work and that I will be back.”

And after her single years – more on that later – she’s back with the Radio 2 Drivetime Show (or “Teatime” as she prefers to call it) and the BBC2 book salon panel show. Under the blanketcurrently halfway through the fifth series.

We chat over lunch at a restaurant in central London – 47-year-old Cox has already ordered enough food for two, and I’m happy to help – and she is exactly as she is shown on radio and television. Friendly, cheerful, thoughtful, self-deprecating and gloriously, gloriously Nordic.

It’s sort of a contrast to the Sarah Cox I remember as a teenager – the one who announces Jerk off of the Week on Channel 4 every Friday night. show girl with an accompanying hand gesture.

Maybe it was the sight of a beautiful (only one) woman with a harsh Scandinavian accent saying “wank” on live TV. Maybe it’s because this show seems so bold in today’s landscape of polished, lucrative live entertainment formats. But the image of a talented and popular channel has taken root.

is it honest More than 25 years later? That not even who she was, but what she did at the age of 21, remains stifled in our cultural consciousness? Maybe not. But this is something Cox has always been aware of, especially after she targeted the more conservative audiences of BBC 2 and Radio 2 (the channel she had to switch to a few days after our interview). a listener called Matt Hancock a “man” on live television.

“I spent about ten years catching up in the first decade of my career — I really tried to clear up misunderstandings,” she says. And one day she reached the audience of BBC 2 – including through Great pottery 2015 – they “said, ‘Oh wait a minute. She’s quite warm and funny, and she’s not particularly flashy.

To show girl came big breakfast and predictable dad-party photos. The media dubbed these young women – Cox, Zoe Ball, Sarah Cawood – who work in radio and dare to have fun, “Ladette.” But it was far from being as extravagant as one might think. “I remember it was a time of extremes,” says Cox. “There were times when you were out all the time, kicking your heels and having wild times. But really, being a little bit of a homebody was a lot.” This house was a “dirty” apartment in the Kensal Rise area, which she still drives past with her children, who roll their eyes at the memory.

Cox briefly modeled to fame in the 1990s, growing up between her father’s farm and her mother’s pub in Bolton – they divorced when she was six or seven years old. With a paternal line of “farmer, farmer, butcher, farmer, butcher – people who raised cows and killed cows”, fame wasn’t really at stake.

That doesn’t mean her father isn’t proud of what Cox has accomplished. “He’s a very stoic, rustic, Nordic daddy,” she confirms. “He went through a stage where he wanted me to work as a model for a while – then I would close my trap and stop calling people jerks on TV. I think it was a slight shock! Especially since I’m the youngest. I’m his little girl, and I was there…”

She was, but she is no more. Today, Cox is promoting the fifth series Under the blanket is a show originally conceived by Amanda Ross, who ran the all-powerful Richard and Judy book club and whom Cox met during the ITV tragedy. The Sarah Cox Show. While the Saturday morning talk show did not survive its first episode, she said it was “the best it’s ever been”. Under the blanket, at home on the BBC. Cox muses on why it didn’t work: “I’m just the face of the BBC. I thought: what bird will go and push its egg into another nest? Cuckoo or sammat. She embraces this metaphor with warmth. “You know, I felt like I was a little BBC egg in the middle of the ITV nest and probably didn’t fit in.”

It was supposed to be a recipe for success: live music, dogs and celebrities in the conversation. Pretty much the same thing that makes her current Radio 2 show sing (minus the dogs).

but Under the blanket is not a consolation prize, and Cox is now a published author herself, having published an autobiography. Until the cows come home. Does that make her better suited for a TV book show? “I’m not qualified enough to think like that yet,” she protests. “I only wrote memoirs. Now comes the second [a novel]. So maybe in a few episodes, but no, no.

Cox’s book was certainly not a memoir of suffering, a chronicle of her seemingly idyllic, though admittedly destitute, childhood. She describes it as “a little core of anxiety that gets stuck in your throat or stomach all the time you’re worried about money. If you don’t have that, you’re in an extremely fortunate position, and I think that’s why I’m a little worried about it. [attitude that the] The glass is half full because there are things we don’t have to worry about and that still amazes me.”

It’s certainly true that Cox’s career is in the strongest position it’s ever been. But the years between those early television appearances and today were not without their blows. Especially when Cox had kids.

She was fired from The breakfast show on Radio 1 Shortly before she found out she was pregnant with her oldest, Lola (now 18), she was placed in a Drivetime slot. When Cox returned from maternity leave, she found her assistant, Scott Mills, constantly showing up.

“Scott was really good,” she insists. “I think I slowed down a bit during the afternoon show.” This time it was moved to the weekend. “So it was definitely a demotion,” she laughs.

The day someone asks a single single man how he gets on with it all, I start asking women that question, but it can be a pretty brutal reality when you’re carrying a baby and then basically on maternity leave. This is a time when many successful women fall behind in their careers or drop out together. The difficult years of Cox’s career definitely coincided with those years for her.

“I’m definitely back [from maternity leave] earlier than I would probably do in an ideal world,” she says. “But for me, it was exactly what I had to do to make a living and continue my career. I mean, I didn’t give birth, and then I ran through the streets to the studio. I had several months. There were only a few hours a day when I was at work and then I was at home with my baby, so it didn’t feel like a divorce at the time.

But honestly, does she think she missed out on opportunities because she was a mom? “No,” she says firmly. It would be a little unfair to say so. To be honest, I just think I’m getting better and better.”

Cox still “worked all the time,” both weekends and evenings, during those quiet years when she met her second husband, Ben Sizer, and had two more children, Isaac and Rene, and now jokes that “I looked like a good parent looked “to be able to do school runs every day.

“So now that I’m on the air,” she says. “I don’t feel guilty for not being around [with the kids] – I did the job.

Cox calls his current appearance “just a dream”. The offer in 2018 came after I almost got on a morning show on Radio 1, until “then it was decided they couldn’t do it because of my age actually – I was 32 or so. They had to bring someone younger.”

While she admits it gave her “a little moral boost,” it also spurred her on to have the Radio 2 dispatcher “call in” to give her a show, or at least listen to her ideas. And he did. After making it big with the sounds of the 80s on weekend nights, she found herself in the tea party. At the same time, Zoe Ball received breakfast, a move that sparked competition and catfight headlines. Cox rolls his eyes. “We text all the time,” she says. “We’re old enough and ugly enough to know that this is just the shit that’s going on.”

Slides and sideways—and several years of wandering, if not in the wild—gave Cox a keen sense of what she had. And that’s what a lot of other people want. “There’s a long line to go through the door and get my job,” she says. “I am fully aware of this, and it is good. It keeps you on your toes and the fire in your stomach that you want to put on a really good show every day.

And, as she said, as hard as it is, Sarah Cox is very, very good.