Fearne Cotton returns to Radio 1‘s mid morning show this week, leaving Sara Cox with nowhere to go.
Sara Cox exits Radio 1 and it’s a low key end of an era.
But hey, Coxy out-stayed Chris Moyles, too. She got the last laugh.
Back in the days of her on the legendary and coveted Radio 1 breakfast show, I found her hard to warm to. She was terrible. Pathetic even. The listeners agreed and left in their droves. This was addressed by flipping her to drive time and catapulting Moyles into the breakfast hot seat, where he stayed for over a century.
Meanwhile, Coxy held on to drive time for a while, before being shuffled to ‘swings’ and weekends.
She was a gonna, except she had the magic seed.
Sara Cox had a baby.
Maternity leave certainly is a brilliant way of prolonging a radio broadcasting career. Shame that men don’t have equal opportunities in this respect. Imagine being able to wander off air for almost a year and the air shift being left open and guaranteed yours when you decided to return. Men are so discriminated against.
The reason why an air-shift can’t be permanently given to anybody else is because the broadcasting organisation, in this instance the BBC, are absolutely terrified of being taken to court over an equality violation. You must by law hold a person’s job open for them and only provide, well, maternity cover when they are on maternity leave.
Had Sara Cox been a man, she’d have been long gone.
However, with long periods off the schedule for child rearing, she had the opportunity to change. Not just mature a little, as one does when one has children, but to re-invent herself. An opportunity that a man would never get. Maybe this wasn’t a conscious move. Who knows. But, when she returned she was funny. She was witty. She was quick. She was observational. She was so good, they actually put her back on the breakfast show when Moyles was on leave.
I really warmed to Coxy‘s latest reinvention of herself. She was different and in a good way. And she was better. From this she managed to squeeze much more air-time. When Fearne Cotton left on her maternity leave, her mid-morning show was frozen for her. Sara Cox sat in and made mid-mornings hers for the 9 months that Cotton took off.
In reality, Cox was inevitably getting to the end of her Radio 1 life, and, regardless of her listening figures, the weekday mid-morning show had to be given back to Cotton lest the Human Resources department die of heart attacks. And Cox, not being pregnant, was ripe for the pushing.
So, last Friday was her almost last. She’ll be back in November for a few covers, but she has no regular or permanent Radio 1 air-shift in the pipeline. She gone!
In recent times she’s been ‘trying out’ over at Radio 2. Covering the early early shift for Vanessa Feltz, she would have a break for a few hours then cross the road back to Radio 1 to host mid-mornings. She seemed to fit perfectly into Radio 2. With a bit of luck this is where she’ll be residing more permanently. I recall Jo Whiley as she was getting ready to exit Radio 1. She was suddenly popping up all over the place on Radio 2, so this is, I hope, a good sign for Sara Cox.
Oh well, apart from a bit in November and Christmas, thanks for the brilliant talkie-bits inbetween the music, Sara Cox.
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