Fearne Cotton has opened up about her battle with depression and how she ‘cried [her] eyes out’ after deciding to quit BBC Radio 1 and covering Zoe Ball on Radio 2.
The presenter parted ways with Radio 1 in 2015 when she fell pregnant with her daughter Honey after a decade with the station.
Following her exit, Fearne occasionally filled in for Zoe on Radio 2 but it began to impact her health.
Speaking to Angela Scanlon on the Thanks A Million podcast, Fearne explained: ‘Honestly, when I did my Radio 1 show, it was just a joy.
‘Towards the end of it, there was perhaps some stuff going on for me but, really, for the majority of my Radio 1 career, it did feel easier, I guess… I left Radio 1 and I was about to have my daughter, Honey, my second child. I had no work at all. None. Zero jobs. I had no safety net.
‘I think I was sort of busy dealing with that and then all of the other stuff sort of came later, really.’
Fearne, 39, said leaving Radio 1 was ‘worth the jump’ to enjoy having a break and ‘a bit of stillness’ in her life.
However, she admitted: ‘That’s unfortunately why I don’t cover for Zoe anymore. I’m like the biggest Zoe Ball fan, I have been since I was a teenager, so then to cover for her show was just like the biggest honour ever.
‘I loved it, I did it for about a year and it was amazing [but] then I had to have a really honest conversation with lovely Helen at Radio 2 and just say, “I don’t sleep at all the night before and I do the show for sometimes two weeks plus and it’s going to make me ill”.’
‘I just think you have to look at your health, which is the most important thing we have… I cried my eyes out making that decision, like I bawled my eyes out because I didn’t want to not do it. But I think sometimes we have to honour what our bodies are telling us,’ she added.
Fearne, who hosts the Happy Place podcast, went on to detail her mental health battle and explained that she ‘fell into a pretty big hole of depression’ and felt isolated at one point.
‘Before this point, I would never have dared talk about my mental health,’ she stated.
She’s now working on boosting her confidence which she lost during the period of depression, particularly when it comes to working on live TV.
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Credit: Original article published here.The post Fearne Cotton ‘cried her eyes out’ after quitting Radio 1 to focus on her health appeared on My Celebrity Life.