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Jo Whiley on raising girls, her 27-year marriage secret and finally getting equal pay at the BBC
Jo Whiley really does seem to be that mythical beast: the woman who has it all. The 52-year-old’s 30-year broadcasting career enters a new phase this month with the launch of a Radio 2 show from 5-8pm, in which she shares equal billing – ‘and equal pay’, she stresses – with co-presenter Simon Mayo.
We meet at her home, a deliciously rock’n’roll barn conversion full of Bowie memorabilia and pictures by the graffiti artist Pure Evil, near Milton Keynes, where she lives with her husband of 27 years, band manager Steve Morton, and their children India, 26, Jude, 18, Cassius, 16, and Coco, nine.
Jo retains the lithe build of the county swimmer she once was, and her tousled rock-chick cool is similarly unchanged, despite a smattering of lines around her eyes (‘I can’t do needles, fillers, Botox – it doesn’t sit well with me’) and her distinctly nerdy obsessions with Doctor Who and gardening.
She has, she says, been ‘very, very lucky’ to have been given ‘lots and lots of opportunities’ in a career that has taken her from BBC Radio Sussex to booking bands on Channel 4’s The Word, to Radio 1, Top of the Pops and Radio 2. But also to have bypassed the ageism and sexism to which women in the media in general, and the BBC in particular, often fall prey to.
‘I grew up in the culture of Britpop and there was laddism going on, but I have always felt like an individual and have been judged as a broadcaster on what I have done,’ she says. ‘I have never been discriminated against.’
Nevertheless, she is the first female presenter of a daytime Radio 2 show for 20 years. ‘I couldn’t believe that when they told me,’ she says. ‘So it is an important thing, and not before time.’
We meet as the debate on the BBC gender pay gap is raging.
‘I was dismayed there was a pay gap, and I am proud they are addressing it,’ she says. ‘I think [BBC director-general] Tony Hall is a good man and I think he is trying to change things, and that it will be addressed and there will be no disparity. If you are a great broadcaster, it doesn’t matter what your sex is. It’s ridiculous that you wouldn’t be paid the same amount of money.’
According to figures released by the BBC last year, Jo is currently on £150,000-£200,000 for presenting the evening show from 8-10pm five nights a week, while Mayo earns £350,000-£400,000 for the 5-7pm drive-time show. So it looks like her salary will be upgraded to match his, but still puts her some way behind the £2.2 million- plus the BBC pays Chris Evans.
Jo says that in the areas of sexism, ageism, pay and harassment, this past year ‘feels like a watershed moment. There has been a shift in attitudes in society. I have two daughters – a nine-year-old and a 26-year-old – and thank God they are growing up now when we have some fantastic role models out there and awareness of what women can achieve at 50, 60, 70, or 80, in fashion, literature, everything.
"Women seem to have been ignored and faded into the background, and now it is wonderful that there are lots of strident, visible, fabulous women doing fantastic things and everyone is going, “Oh yeah, they are still f—ing brilliant.”’
Jo and Simon have never presented together on radio before but, ‘Our oldest children are the same age, so we’ve been good friends since we were on Radio 1, and used to go away for [family] weekends together.’
The programme they will create will feature the ‘Parent Taxi Service’ segment from her evening show and his popular ‘Confessions’ slot from drive time, but Jo stresses it is a completely new show, not an amalgam of their current solo ones. There will be new and established bands, discussions of films, theatre and books, and the rest they will make up as they go along. ‘You never know how things will work out until you are live on air.’
Live radio is Jo’s true love. ‘As both a listener and a broadcaster I love the connection you have,’ she says. ‘It is the most perfect medium there is. It’s about humanity, friendship and being company to someone and entertaining them.’
It has largely remained a trusted medium in the era of fake news, ‘because no one is tampering with what you are saying’. She thinks great radio DJs are born and not made, and grew up listening to Terry Wogan, Pete Murray and Jimmy Young on Radio 2.
Jo was born in Northampton, and her mum ran the post office on Althorp, the estate of Princess Diana’s family, the Spencers. ‘I never knew Diana but my mum and dad did as she went into the post office all the time. When she got married it was wildly exciting,’ she says.
Jo’s younger sister Frances, who was a huge fan of Diana’s, has the rare syndrome cri du chat, so named because newborn sufferers make high-pitched mewing sounds. Frances has learning difficulties and symptoms similar to autism, uses a wheelchair, and is prone to sudden rages.
She now lives in a Mencap home after being sectioned three years ago. ‘It was awful for my parents coming to terms with not having their child at home – my dad says it was like having an arm chopped off,’ says Jo.
She is fierce in her condemnation of Government cuts to funding for those with disabilities, particularly adults. She speaks fondly and proudly of Frances, who is about to turn 50, and is moved briefly to tears when remembering her 40th birthday. ‘Me and my dad were a bit exasperated about the kerfuffle my mum was making, until she said, “Don’t you understand: this is Frances’s wedding, because she won’t get married and she won’t have kids.”’
Jo met Steve when he booked a band on to one of her shows, and they married in 1991. India, now a food stylist, was born in 1992 when her mother’s broadcasting career was well under way, and Jo pays tribute to her Radio 1 predecessor Janice Long, who fought for proper maternity rights when her own child was born.
‘I probably benefitted from that because when I had India it was not a big deal,’ Jo says. ‘I have always taken my kids everywhere with me. When I was at Radio 1, they would come with me and crawl around the floor. I breastfed Jude while I was interviewing Christopher Eccleston, and I’ve always taken them to festivals.’
When I last met Jo in 2017, the whole family were off to Glastonbury – she to cosy BBC digs in a pub, Steve and the kids to a tent in the mud pit. This time round we are slumped on the giant pink sofa in the centre of their sprawling family home, being slobbered over by two huge, daft dogs. This is a party house: there’s vodka in the fridge and the huge inflatable gold Happy Birthday banner over the island in the kitchen island ‘has been up for a year’.
Steve currently manages the successful singer-songwriter duo The Shires, the first British country act to be signed to a major Nashville label. Jo says he earns about the same as she does, isn’t fazed by her being famous and handles the logistics of their erratic careers and large brood.
‘He can work from home, so he is around with the kids a lot more than I am,’ says Jo. The new job will mean she’ll get home before midnight for the first time in years. ‘I sometimes feel I am missing out on the kids growing up when I am working a lot,’ she says.
‘They and my husband do all these things together, and I look at photos and feel I am missing out. But you can’t think too deeply about that because you would genuinely have a panic attack. I have not been there to read Coco bedtime stories for the past four years and that is really hard.’ (Coco has been consoled with the promise of an introduction to Ed Sheeran at some point.)
Jude is currently studying English and film at Brighton, while Cass wants a career in music, which causes his mother some angst. ‘It is really hard to succeed and there is so much competition. Even the big acts find it hard to sell records today and have to tour all the time.’
Her children grew up with a keen empathy for those who are different or disabled, because of Frances. They sound well-adjusted and supportive, with India lecturing Coco on the politics of body hair and the boys forming a covers band named Spare Rib, after the feminist magazine; all of them are appalled by the selfie culture.
In general, Jo thinks the younger generation are ‘kind, very tolerant, politically and socially aware’, partly because social media has given them so much insight into other lives. I ask how her kids could rebel against their rock’n’roll parents, and she says she’d be furious if they started smoking, adding that Cass ‘tortured’ the family with Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd albums during a prog-rock phase.
She, Steve, India and Cass are running a half-marathon together in May and the whole family loves surf- or wakeboarding.
Jo herself still swims, having competed for Northamptonshire as a girl, and visited a personal trainer recently to rebuild some muscle after friends told her she had lost weight. ‘I like feeling strong. I don’t want to be a spindly little thing,’ she says. ‘I have always had muscly swimmer’s shoulders, and I love the fact my daughters are strong.’
She doesn’t have much of a beauty regime apart from ‘collagen wave facials that involve heated rods but no penetration’, and would never have work done because ‘the family would all take the mickey out of me’.
Fashion-wise, she has ‘always been a jeans person, and I like dresses because I don’t have a tiny waist’. Today she is barefoot in a Second Female jumper and 10-year-old J Brand jeans, ‘my gardening trousers’.
Before she heads off to pick Coco up for a school sports day, I ask how she and Steve make it work.
‘I think it’s healthy that we are not in each other’s pockets all the time,’ she says.
‘We are fortunate that we still find the same things interesting and funny and we have very similar backgrounds. We do genuinely enjoy each other’s company, so on a Friday night if we haven’t seen much of each other in the week, it’s great to sit on this settee here, with a glass of vodka, watching Queer Eye or some stupid quiz show and just catching up. We like the same music, stupid games, and fancy dress parties.’
I’d read that you picked Cass up from school on his 16th birthday dressed as Spider-Man, I say. ‘Yes, and next year he will be leaving school for good,’ she grins. ‘And I will be dressing up as Spider-Man again, and he’ll hate me for it.’
Maybe for a bit, but I reckon he’ll also be pretty damn proud his mum is Jo Whiley.
Jo Whiley and Simon Mayo will be on BBC Radio 2, 5-8pm, from Monday 14 May, and will present BBC Music’s Biggest Weekend on Sunday 27 May from 3-10pm