Why I don’t want to wake up with super-safe Scott Mills

Zoe Ball’s replacement on the Radio 2 Breakfast Show is a safe pair of hands – but a sign that the Corporation needs more exciting signings

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Another shot of vanilla in your morning coffee? At 8.17am today, just after playing Del Amitri’s Always the Last to Know, Zoe Ball announced that she was leaving the Radio 2 Breakfast Show after six years. Listeners truly were the last to know, as Radio 2 had Ball’s replacement already lined up, with Scott Mills anointed as her successor by 8.45am. It is an underwhelming appointment.
Mills is the obvious choice, the radio careerist who’s paid his dues for many years – but it’s such a safe appointment it feels timid. Radio 2 is comfortably the most-listened-to station in the UK (13.3 million), and the Radio 2 Breakfast Show and Vernon Kay’s mid-morning slot the most-listened-to shows (6.3m and 6.8m respectively), but the assault from commercial radio in recent years – commercial radio’s audience share has been rising steadily for years and now stands at 55 per cent – means that neither of these things can be taken for granted any more. Mills’s safe pair of hands comes with kid gloves. Don’t switch off, listener. Don’t be scared.
To give Mills his credit, he is a dyed-in-the-wool radio man, beginning his professional career at the age of 16 with Hampshire’s Power FM, before working at regional stations in Bristol, Manchester and London. He joined Radio 1 in 1998. He is only 51, yet there are few more experienced or cannier broadcasters on the airwaves. And, crucially for Radio 2’s credibility, he is not a reality TV star, an influencer or a weatherman. However, it’s an indictment of BBC Radio that the shoo-in for the job is someone polished and a little bland – where are the future Steve Wrights and Simon Mayos?
Ball stepping down should come as no surprise. While she lost a sizeable chunk of the audience when Evans left, she has steadied the ship and is popular among the Radio 2 devotees. But her tenure has been a difficult one culminating in a personal annus horribilis. Ball will not look back fondly on 2024, during which she was regularly off the airwaves with illness, and her mother died. Mills, at least, has had plenty of practice as her stand-in. (Mills’s 2024, by contrast: he got married, won Celebrity Race Across the World with his new husband, and now has UK radio’s plum job.)
There was emotion in Ball’s voice as she told listeners that December 20th would be her final show (though she is remaining in the Radio 2 “family”), but there was relief too. You didn’t doubt her for a second when she said she would not miss the 4am alarm clock and could devote mornings to her teenage daughter once again. Helen Thomas, Head of Radio 2, will be sore that she is losing someone with such natural warmth and charisma, even if it is clear that Ball needs a break to recover her pep. Thomas’s bosses, however, might be secretly relieved – with Gary Lineker, Huw Edwards and Ball (on a not too shabby salary of £950k) leaving, that knocks the three highest earners off the BBC’s budget at a stroke. Greg James, at No 4, beware.
To my mind, Mills (16th highest BBC salary) is an uninspiring choice. Before the underrated Ball (who was the first female Breakfast Show presenter on both Radio 1 and Radio 2), the Breakfast Show was hosted by Evans and, before him, Terry Wogan. Evans and Wogan approached the show from different ends of the spectrum, but both were able to form a singular bond with the listener. The great DJs make you feel as if they are talking directly to you. I have always felt with Mills that he is talking to someone else. He has a breeziness that plays well in the afternoons, but mornings call for someone whose voice feels like an old pair of slippers. If Ball is the nation’s favourite aunt, Mills is the aunt’s new boyfriend, who you don’t mind but can’t help wishing she’d get together with someone a bit more exciting.
While Gary Davies might have been a popular choice, and Gaby Roslin will likely be a bit miffed, if we had to keep it strictly Radio 2 I would have plumped for Liza Tarbuck or Sara Cox. A braver move would have been to cast the net into the teeming pool of podcasters. Old BBC hand Adam Buxton, perhaps? Off Menu’s James Acaster? Or – really shoot for the moon – Richard Osman?
Radio 2 is playing it safe by appointing a familiar, in-house figure, shuffling its pack (Trevor Nelson is moving to Mills’s 2pm slot) in the hope that no one feels the rocking of the boat. Listeners will know exactly what they’re getting from Mills as they fumble for the dial in the morning. I just wish they were getting something more exciting.
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