Perky. It's the word that best sums up the ubiquitous Zoe Ball. Her platinum hair, her "cheeky" ear-to-ear grin, even her size eight kitten heel shoes and sticking-out ears are perkiness personified. The perkiness levels could be the reason so many people find her so annoying. Or they could just be jealous of the girl they called "jellyhead" at school.
You see, Zoe - Zo to her mates, and she has lots and lots of them - possesses absolutely everything any ladette could ever want, and more. To top the fact that she is the undisputed Princess of Presenters (and presenting is the new rock'n'roll) she is newly-married.
Yesterday she took everyone by surprise by getting married a day early in Bath Registry Office to one of the coolest people in pop. Her groom is Fat Boy Slim, aka Norman Cook (36), the DJ whose funked-up offerings rest in the CD players of a surprising cross-section of teenagers, clubbers and his more discerning 30-something peers. His music has become a permanent soundtrack at suburban house parties.
Yes, Zo has lots and lots of mates, around seven million a week at the latest conservative estimate. Like an eager puppy she has befriended the listeners to her BBC Radio 1 show, regaling them with her latest media-babe exploits which, depending on the day, could be that she had cornflakes for breakfast or that she is a fan of lipstick lesbianism.
When she began the coveted slot two years ago she was encouraged by her Radio 1 bosses to stay out all night and then tell her listeners about her conquests: how much she had to drink; what celebrities were there. She was once voted the girl that 86 percent of teenagers can relate to: because most British teenagers hang out in London's trendy Met Bar drinking Jack Daniel's and strawberry daiquiris. Obviously.
Ball is what excitable TV and radio producers describe as a broadcasting natural. Presenting the Saturday morning TV show Live and Kicking or appearing all long limbs and lustful looks in TV ads, she exudes the talent that the likes of Gail Porter can only wish for.
Natural talent, for those who wish to emulate Zo, includes engaging well with people, snogging a lot, coyly swearing ("Oooops") and speaking your mind. The odd boo-boo - like flashing your breasts on television - if not repeated too often can also be endearing. Also, and this is important, you must be able to burst into tears for just about any reason at all because behind all the honorary bloke bravado you are, never forget it, just a girl. New Live and Kicking babe, Irish-born Emma Ledden, take note.
You've come a long way, Bally. All the way from leafy Buckinghamshire where you say your childhood was sheltered and you were overprotected by your famous Dad. Johnny Ball was the guy who made science seem far less boring than teachers made it look at school. In his programme Think of a Number he dressed up in caveman outfits to explain the law of gravity. An embarrassing parental anecdote to rival all others it must be said.
Her mother, a former model, walked out of the family home and they rarely saw each other until a reunion when Zoe was 18. The relentlessly self-deprecating presenter says she was a "monster baby" yellow from head to foot because her mother had jaundice. As an adolescent she was "a hopeless tomboy". "I just didn't care what I looked like". Up to the age of 16, she has said, her hair was a mousy brown pudding-bowl do, with a "hatchet-job fringe".
Not academically inclined (hence the jellyhead nickname), Ball left school after her O levels - about the same as the Junior Cert - and spent two years at art college before completing just half a term on a media studies course at a London polytechnic. She dropped out to go to Manchester where she was a runner at Granada TV. Her friends at the time included Steve "Alan Partridge" Coogan. To make spare cash she did a bit of modelling for Hoover bags, overcoats and the like.
But London beckoned, and the world of children's TV opened up before the bubbly bottle-blonde; Cool Cube, The Broom Cupboard and O zone led to the more grown-up Big Break- fast which she presented for eight months.
Then came her hugely successful stint on Live and Kicking in 1995 and the Radio 1 show two years later when she took over from the out-of-favour Chris Evans. A few months ago she quit Live and Kicking to spend more time with boyfriend Norman and wept liberally throughout her final show. Before Fatboy Slim, she had one three-year relationship and three brief flings. "I feel like I've had a wild time. I've been very badly behaved and now I would like a family, a home and stability," she said, shortly before the third, more serious, fling ended. She met Fatboy in Ibiza. She has put him on the straight and narrow, he says, while she describes him as an "animal in bed".
Thankfully there will be no representative from Hell! magazine at today's reception in Somerset. There will, perkily enough, be a bouncy castle and lots of disc-spinning going on. Zoe has made it clear she wants babies straight away. As she puts it, the sound of her and her bridesmaid Sara Cox's "ovaries clacking together can drown out background music". Slightly more information perhaps than her seven million mates needed to know.
"It's quite strange how anybody can be a star these days," she mused in one interview. "That is the thing you have to remember. It is very easy to believe the hype and get wrapped up in this kind of exciting showbiz world, which is actually pretty shallow and meaningless . . . When kids come up to me and say they want to be in media I feel like saying "Oh, don't".
Pity Zoe's Dad never thought of it.