Writing ‘till the cows come home’

The Bolton-born Radio 2 presenter - former party animal ‘ladette’ of the 90s - is instantly likeable, quirky, funny and chatty, just as she is on the radio.

Of course, Cox, 44, has long since ditched the ladette label for a more grown-up life with her family, and her gentle, uplifting 5-7pm Drivetime slot on the nation’s most popular radio station.

Cox has also found time to write her first book, Till The Cows Come Home - a gentle, poignant early autobiography in which she pays homage to her childhood, largely growing up on her father’s cattle farm just outside Bolton, surrounded by dogs, cows, horses and lots of ‘cack’.

The seeds of chat were sown in her dad’s farm kitchen, her nana’s front room and her mum’s pub - her parents divorced when she was seven but she insists she wasn’t affected, as she went on to live with her mum and stepfather who lived only 10 minutes away from her father.

She initially intended the book to be a love letter to her father, Len, who is ‘the calm at the eye of the storm’, but it ended up a homage to her mother, Jackie, the strong 4ft 11in heroine who she describes as ‘opinionated, funny, loving and complicated, but always there’.

The book charts her childhood as she fussed over newborn calves, tumbled over hay bales in the barn, and doted on her beloved pony Gus at Grundy Fold Farm, a smallholding which her father still runs.

He was divorced with three young children when he met Cox’s mother but she raised them as her own and went on to have Sara and sister Yvonne. Cox recalls that her mother held down a lot of jobs to keep the wolf from the door, and ran a pub, which has made her appreciate her own lifestyle more.