Sara Cox on the joy of telling a good yarn – and why she’ll never write about a zombie invasion

The broadcaster and novelist talks to Lisa Salmon about writing novels, her ‘gorgeous’ horse, and why she stands up throughout her radio shows.

Sara Cox talks work, winding down and wine (Guy Levy/PA)

There’s nothing Sara Cox likes better than telling a good yarn, be that on her BBC Radio 2 show or in the novels she writes.

“I quite fancy myself as a bit of a raconteur, like my granddad. He loved to tell a story, and I love to tell a story on the radio,” chirps the blunt-speaking northern lass, who has recently written two best-selling novels.

She says it was publishers who initially suggested she should write her own books, proposing she focused on parenting. “Parenting kept coming up, and that gave me the ick a little bit,” she admits. “People were struggling with what box to put me in when it came to writing, whether I should do a non-fiction ‘well, we all muddle through parenting’, kind of lark, which really wasn’t me.”

Instead, she’s currently writing her third novel about love, friendship, and everyday struggles – things she can relate to herself. “I just want to tell a good story,” she says, “and I always wanted to tell quite a human story. I just quite like everyday people and their struggles and their challenges, and also the lighter side of life, and love, relationships and friendship.

“That’s where I start, writing about people like me, like my girlfriends, and that’s always a nice springboard to launch myself off into writing.

“So there’s never going to be an apocalypse in one of my books, or a zombie invasion. But hopefully, they’ll be funny and warm and will tell a bit of a yarn about regular folk.”

As well as writing her own books, Cox, 49, is on the judging panel for this year’s Kindle Storyteller Award, which celebrates the UK’s best self-published story, and she also presents the BBC2 show Between the Covers, where she and celebrity guests share the joys of reading.

Not surprisingly, she has a voracious appetite for all sorts of books herself – to the extent that she keeps her Kindle under her pillow during the night in case she wakes up and wants to read.

“We have busy brains these days,” she explains, “and if I wake in the middle of the night and my Kindle is under my pillow, where I keep it safe, I can just reach for it and read something soothing.”

As well as being enjoyable, the mum-of-three (who’s also the owner of one horse, three dogs, two cats and two tortoises) believes reading is good for her mental health, and says: “I think, for your mental health, it’s great just to find a little quiet corner, cuddle up with a dog or two and read.

“I feel like reading needs to be rebranded a little bit rather than as something that’s indulgent or a little bit lazy – so you’re not thinking that instead of reading there’s 10 different drawers you could be sorting out in the house, or something you could be mopping.”

But although reading is a big part of her life, her main passion outside work – aside from her husband Ben Cyzer and children Lola, 20, Isaac, 16, and Renee, 14 – is her beloved horse Nelly. Cox grew up on her father’s farm in Bolton and owned ponies as a child, but only bought Nelly, an Irish draught cross thoroughbred, in 2020.

“She’s gorgeous – she’s one of the best things that ever happened to me,” declares Cox. “I’m so pleased she came into my life.”

Nelly is stabled in Hertfordshire, about half an hour’s drive from Cox’s north London home, and she says she get up to see and ride her about four mornings a week. “Nelly’s 18 now, but she’s super fit, and she’s, touch wood, in great nick. So I think we’ve got a bit of time together yet.”

Of course, you can’t talk to the DJ Sara Cox without discussing her radio show. She’s presented the Radio 2 Drivetime show since January 2019, and gushes: “I love it, I love it! The show’s one of the first things I think about when I wake up, and every Friday, when we do All Requests, which I was a huge fan of as a listener, I still wake up buzzing that it’s All Requests.

“It’s three hours, and every link is a different caller choosing a song, but it’s a real pleasure to do. You have no idea who’s going to be calling, and we learn stuff about people. So it’s really interesting – I’m just quite nosy naturally.”

What’s also interesting is that Cox, who says she loves exercising, now stands up for her entire three-hour show instead of sitting at a desk. She says one of the late Dr Michael Mosley’s BBC Sounds Specials, about inflammation, spurred her on to stop sitting down during shows.

“Basically, it’s about you can’t ever sit down – that’s when the trouble starts,” she explains. “So when I do my radio show, because we’re in these new studios – I think we moved there in maybe January/February – I stand up while I broadcast, which I never used to do, even when I was at Radio 1 and you could stand up.

“I stand up for the whole three hours while I’m chatting. I just think it gives a certain energy to your voice without being too shouty. But also, it’s really good for you to just be stood up instead of sat on your derriere.

“It’s quite good because sometimes I’m manking about and pretending to do karate or something, so it’s quite handy if you’re already stood up!”

As for other exercise, Cox says she thinks strength training is important, and admits she’s “really lucky” because she’s converted her garage into a gym. “I really like exercise – I think mental health-wise, it really is up there as a necessity for me,” she says.

“I’ll always try and do a bit of something each day, even if it’s just 20 minutes to do some weights, do a little HIIT, or do Pilates or something like that. But I cycle quite a bit and I walk the dogs quite a lot too.”

And after all that exercise, you wouldn’t blame her for relaxing with a glass of wine – but although in the Nineties she was dubbed a ‘ladette’ for partying with pals like fellow presenter Zoe Ball, she says “I don’t drink huge amounts now.”  But when she does have a glass of wine, she wants it to be a quality tipple, which is why she’s just released her own wine collection.

“It’s another dream job,” she chuckles. “We’ve got books, we’ve got radio, we’ve got wine. I didn’t want to just have my mush gurning out from any old bottles of plonk, so we’ve curated a lovely collection.”

She says the collection starts off with a “lovely chablis, a beautiful red from Bordeaux, and a delightful rosé,” and adds wryly: “In the past they said I was partying, but little did they know, all those years I spent drinking wine, it was research.”

Sara Cox is on the judging panel for this year’s  Kindle Storyteller Award, which celebrates the UK’s best self-published story and is open to authors who publish their story via Kindle Direct Publishing between May 1 – August 31. The winning author receives a £20,000 prize fund and a marketing campaign for their title on Amazon UK.