Zoe Ball thanks neighbours for calling fire brigade after leaving candle burning at home

Zoe Ball told listeners tuned into her radio show about her near brush with disaster after leaving a candle burning in her home.

The presenter shared the anecdote on Tuesday’s (3 October) edition of The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show, which she has hosted on BBC Radio 2 since 2019.

Ball, 52, prefaced her tale by jokingly telling her co-presenters that she was “barely alive this morning, on a personal level”.

During Monday’s broadcast (2 October), the former Strictly Come Dancing: It Takes Two co-host told listeners about her pride in having baked a cake for the first time.

Early on in Tuesday’s show, Ball began: “I haven’t told you what happened to me at the end of the show yesterday.

“Do you remember on the show yesterday I was talking about things that have happened to you for the first time?

“Well yesterday, something happened to me for the first time, that the fire brigade went to my house. I had left a candle burning in the lounge.”

She continued: “I was so obsessed with The Matrix when I watched it on Sunday night and the fact that I had made a cake, I had gone to bed and hadn’t blown out one of the candles.”

Ball added that she’d left the flame burning overnight, and when she’d left her East Sussex home for work the next morning.

“It was left smouldering in the lounge and at 25 minutes past nine, my smoke alarms went off and thank goodness! Otherwise, I might have gone home to no home!”

Ball went on to thank her neighbours, who called the emergency services when they heard the alarms ringing, as well as the firefighters who extinguished the candle.

Together, they “stopped my house from burning down”, she said.

Ball noted that she later visited the fire station to share some cake with the fighters as a thank-you for their service, before reminding her listeners of safety measures such as checking the batteries of their smoke alarms regularly.

In 2019, Ball’s appointment as the host of the BBC Radio 2 Breakfast Show made history; succeeding Chris Evans, Ball became the first woman to hold the position in the station’s history.

The Radio 2 Breakfast Show is the most listened-to show on UK radio, attracting 7.26 million weekly listeners as of May 2023.