Zoe Ball is leaving her BBC Radio 2 breakfast show after six years.

The 53-year-old, who recently lost her mother to cancer, will present her last show on Friday, 20 December.

She said she was leaving to focus on family, but will remain part of the Radio 2 team and will give further details next year.

Announcing the news on her Tuesday show, she said: “After six years of fun times alongside you all on the breakfast show, I’ve decided it’s time to step away from the early alarm call and start a new chapter.

“You know I think the world of you all, listeners, and it truly has been such a privilege to share the mornings with you, to go through life’s little ups and downs, we got through the lockdown together, didn’t we?

“We’ve shared a hell of a lot, the good times, the tough times, there’s been a lot of laughter. And I am going to miss you cats.”

Scott Mills will replace Ball on the breakfast show following her departure next month.

“Zoe and I have been such good friends now for over 25 years and have spent much of that time as part of the same radio family here at Radio 2 and also on Radio 1,” he said.

“She’s done an incredible job on this show over the past six years, and I am beyond excited to be handed the baton.”

Hugging outside the BBC building on the day of the announcement, Ball said she was “really chuffed for my mate and really excited about it”.

Ball was the first female host of both the BBC Radio 1 and Radio 2 breakfast shows, starting at the Radio 1 breakfast show in 1998, and taking over her current Radio 2 role from Chris Evans in 2020 after he left the show.

She took a break from hosting her show over the summer, returning in September.

Ahead of her stint in radio, Ball – who is the daughter of children’s presenter Johnny Ball – co-hosted the BBC’s Saturday morning children’s magazine show Live & Kicking alongside Jamie Theakston for three years from 1996.

She has two children, Woody and Nelly, with her ex-husband, DJ and musician Norman Cook, known professionally as Fatboy Slim.

Ball said in her announcement her last show towards the end of December will be “just in time for Christmas with plenty of fun and shenanigans”.

“While I’m stepping away from the Breakfast Show, I’m not disappearing entirely – I’ll still be a part of the Radio 2 family, with more news in the New Year,” she added.

“I’m excited to embrace my next chapter, including being a mum in the mornings, and I can’t wait to tune in on the school run!”

Helen Thomas, head of Radio 2, said: “Zoe has woken up the nation on Radio 2 with incredible warmth, wit and so much joy since January 2019, and I’d like to thank her for approaching each show with as much vim and vigour as if it were her first. I’m thrilled that she’ll remain an important part of the Radio 2 family.”

Mills, 51, got his first presenting role aged just 16 for a local station in Hampshire, and went on to present in Bristol and Manchester, before joining BBC Radio 1 in 1998.

He got his first permanent role on Radio 2 in 2022, replacing Steve Wright, after previously working as a cover presenter on the station.

British actress Olivia Williams has said that in more than 30 years of acting on screen, starring in Dune: Prophecy is the first time she has felt confident her scenes would not be cut from a project.

Williams, who has appeared in films including The Sixth Sense, Rushmore and An Education, and portrayed Camilla Parker Bowles, before she became Queen, in the final two seasons of The Crown, can now be seen in the TV prequel to the blockbuster Denis Villeneuve films.

She stars alongside her close friend Emily Watson, with the pair playing the Harkonnen sisters – two women fighting forces that threaten the future of humankind.

Based on the Dune and Sisterhood of Dune novels, the Sky Atlantic show is set 10,000 years before the birth of Timothee Chalamet‘s character, Paul Atreides, in the films, and follows the two women as they found the fabled sisterhood that will later become known as the Bene Gesserit.

Despite knowing each other for 30 years, and even working at the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) at the same time, the show marks Williams and Watson’s first time on screen together.

Williams says they are often asked why they have never acted together before. There’s a simple answer, she tells Sky News. “It’s because there are no scripts for two women of the same age to lead a story.

“We’re used to playing the character that can, if the film’s running a bit long, be cut out because you don’t genuinely affect the plot of the show. Well, just try cutting the Harkonnen sisters out of this story!”

She adds: “We knew that our work would be used – which, in 35 years, I’d say is the first time that’s happened.”

In Dune: Prophecy, Watson plays the Mother Superior of the Bene Gesserit Sisters, Valya Harkonnen, whilst Williams plays her younger sibling, Sister Tula Harkonnen.

Watson, who recently starred alongside Oscar winner Cillian Murphy in Small Things Like These, says it feels wonderful to be given the freedom to portray strong, stoic characters.

“When we were first cast, we went and sat in the National Portrait Gallery and sat in front of portraits of Queen Elizabeth I, Mary, Queen of Scots, Bloody Mary, and just thought about that time when those very powerful women were front and centre, and terrified and deeply paranoid because everybody wanted to either marry them or kill them.”

The two actresses first met outside the Black Swan pub in Stratford-upon-Avon when they were starting out in their careers with the nearby RSC.

Williams says it “doesn’t feel real” that their careers have become as successful as they have.

“It is an extraordinary thing that I said I would stop at 30 and go and try to be a lawyer. I didn’t intend to be working as an actor and now I can’t believe my luck.

“You get to the end of every job and you go, was that the last time I will act? And that is a really tough way to, you know, bring up a family and you can’t get a bloody mortgage or life insurance with a lifestyle like that. So anyway, that was my real-life whinge.”

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Watson said the experience of leading a big-budget series together was not lost on her, and she felt an onus to help create a positive environment for the younger actors.

“We were like the CEOs and we were making sure that everybody was seen and felt part of something and were feeling okay about how everything was going down. And it felt like a really healthy way to do it.”

Dune: Prophecy is available to watch on Sky Atlantic and Now

Jaguar has left people scratching their heads with a new glossy advert which fails to show any cars.

The British luxury vehicle maker has released a commercial featuring a series of models, in brightly-coloured clothing, emerging from a lift into an austere landscape.

They are then seen in various poses as different slogans appear on screen, including “live vivid”, “delete ordinary” and “copy nothing”.

But it has created a series of reactions online from ridicule to confusion, because there is no hint of any cars.

Tesla boss Elon Musk tweeted a response to Jaguar’s advert posted on X by asking: “Do you sell cars?”

It prompted the reply: “Yes. We’d love to show you” followed by an invite to a promotional event. But others on X continued to question the advert and what it represented.

“Umm where are the cars in this ad?” one user posted, while a second wrote: “I thought you guys made cars?”

There was also confusion from another person who asked: “What are you trying to sell me?”

Jaguar teased that: “All will be revealed… Think of this [advert] as a declaration of intent. We’re shifting gears, not our purpose. Stay tuned.”

In a news release to accompany the advert, the carmaker described it as part of a “completely transformed Jaguar brand” and “a new era” which makes “it relevant for a contemporary audience”.

“This is a complete reset,” said managing director Rawdon Glover. “To bring back such a globally renowned brand we had to be fearless.”

In the lead-up to the campaign, Jaguar announced it was discontinuing five models with “close to zero profitability”.

It has developed three new ultra-luxury electric vehicles, one of which is set to be unveiled at Miami’s Art Basel event next month.