Zoe Ball has long been riding high as one of Britain's biggest broadcasting stars and was, until recently, the BBC's highest-paid female presenter. But the former Radio 2 breakfast host has learned that it was a very different story for her impoverished grandmother – a serial fantasist who had 'delusions of grandeur' and was sent to a mental hospital for her 'grandiose ideas'.
In an emotional upcoming edition of the BBC's Who Do You Think You Are?, Zoe discovers that Margaret 'Peggy' Minto, the mother of her late mum Julia, was committed for acute mania after being put on trial for shoplifting. Zoe, 55, fights back tears as she learns about the contrast between her own life and her grandmother's – a coalminer's daughter who worked as a domestic servant for wealthy families from the age of 15.
Zoe learns that Peggy became depressed after bringing up Julia on her own while her policeman husband Bill was living on the other side of the country with her two other daughters. She fabricated stories about herself and became 'excessively extravagant with money,' running up a series of large bills. After being arrested for shoplifting in 1963, aged 50, doctors committed her after she began to express 'grandiose ideas' during the trial.
Zoe has previously been paid more than £1million a year by the BBC, though last week she revealed she has missed out on the job hosting Strictly Come Dancing, saying: 'I didn't get it, but it's OK. I have worked through the seven stages of grief and rejection.'
Contrasting her life with Peggy's, she told Who Do You Think You Are?: 'It's kind of fascinating, isn't it, that here is a lass who came from a very impoverished working-class family. [She] goes to work for some very wealthy people. She is suddenly surrounded by all that grandiose behaviour. Later on, she's probably a bit confused. She has seen the good life, and wants a bit of that herself.'
Peggy's fantasies continued even while she was undergoing treatment, which included electroconvulsive therapy – an electric current passed through the brain. Zoe is shown a letter Peggy wrote to friends claiming to have won a legal battle against Woolworths stores, promising to use the windfall to take them on an all-expenses-paid trip to Norway. Zoe tells the programme: 'It is an amazing demonstration of what it is like in someone's mind who is going through something like this.'
Zoe never met Peggy because Julia and her father, children's TV star Johnny Ball, divorced when she was two and she was raised by Johnny. She and her mother were only reunited when Zoe turned 18. Peggy died aged 66 in 1979, when Zoe was nine. Her death certificate mentions pneumonia, liver failure, and manic-depressive psychosis.
Although Peggy spent her life in and out of hospital after the committal, Zoe was moved to be shown a second letter she wrote about knitting jumpers for Julia, who died of cancer in April 2024. 'I am really happy just to see she is doing well,' Zoe says. 'Bless her heart. I am so relieved that she was OK again. Seeing my mum's name in there as well. Thank you for showing me that. I am so glad she managed to get the right treatment. She was able to be a mother and a grandma.'
