Radio 2 newsreader Tina Daheley has announced she is leaving breakfast radio after 18 years presenting the early slots for BBC.Tina revealed her news in an emotional moment on Tuesday morning’s Radio 2 Breakfast Show with Scott Mills’ stand-in host Gary Davies.Her departure comes just days before Sara Cox takes over the Radio 2 Breakfast Show as the new host after Mills was sacked in March.Breaking the news live on air, Tina gushed: ‘It’s been a privilege to have had a whole generation of people grow up with me.’The broadcaster started her Breakfast Radio stint on 1Xtra in 2007, and told her fans that reading the news on Trevor Nelson’s Breakfast Show was her ‘dream job.’From there she moved to Radio 1, working with Chris Moyles and Nick Grimshaw on the Breakfast Show. After Nick’s departure she said: ‘That’s it, I’m done, I’m hanging up my breakfast show mic. I’m never doing a breakfast show again.’ Radio 2 newsreader Tina Daheley has announced she is leaving breakfast radio after 18 years presenting the early slots for BBC’And then Zoe [Ball] came knocking, and I thought, “I can’t not, it’s Radio 2, it’s huge”.’She started working with Zoe when she took over the Radio 2 Breakfast Show in 2019, and stayed on to work alongside Mills, calling him her ‘work husband’, when he took over in 2025. She told Gary and the Radio 2 team on Tuesday: ‘I’ve been waking up early for 18 years, I think I deserve a lie in.’ In an Instagram statement Tina wrote: ‘After more than seven years of early alarm calls on Radio 2, I’m stepping away from Radio 2 Breakfast.”It’s been one of the greatest privileges of my life to wake up with you every morning, and humbling to have been trusted to deliver the news on the biggest breakfast show in Europe.”My breakfast run ends at Radio 2, but it all started at 1Xtra, where I landed my dream job reading the news on Trevor Nelson’s Breakfast Show. From there, I spent a decade broadcasting to one in four young people in the UK on Radio 1.”After 18 years and six back-to-back breakfast shows (probably a record in there somewhere), I’m looking forward to a lie-in.’She ended her statement by ‘wishing Sara and her team the very best of luck. I’ll be tuning in while doing the school run’, telling her Radio 2 colleagues that her daughter Athena, five, is ‘so excited to have her mummy back’. Her departure comes just days before Sara Cox takes over the Radio 2 Breakfast Show as the new host after Scott Mills (pictured with Tina and Ellie Brennan in 2025) was sacked in MarchTina, who also presents on BBC Breakfast and BBC News, also teased new projects as she added on Instagram: ‘I’m not leaving Radio 2, you’ll hear me between 12-2pm when Jeremy’s [Vine] away, and you’ll see me on BBC One after the summer. Beyond that, watch this space.’Zoe, who quit Radio 2 last year, was among those to send a message to Tina, commenting on her Instagram post: ‘Love you Tina. Class act darling girl. I can highly recommend the later start to your day.’ Back in March, Tina said she was going through a ‘difficult’ time when Mills, her friend and co-host, was sacked. Mills was sacked after it was discovered he had been the subject of allegations of ‘serious sexual offences’ against a teenage boy under 16. Mills was questioned under caution by police in 2018, but the case was rejected by the Crown Prosecution Service in 2019 due to a lack of evidence. The BBC admitted that it knew about the allegations as far back as 2017. The team (from left, Richie Anderson, Tina, Zoe Ball and Mike Williams) in 2024, on Zoe’s last Radio 2 breakfast showIn May, Katie Hind, the Daily Mail’s consultant showbiz editor, revealed Mills is suing the BBC over his axing.Mills believes he was unfairly dismissed and his legal team at the London-based firm Level Law has been corresponding with the Corporation, his employers for 28 years, for weeks.Friends of Mills believe he was used as a ‘scapegoat’ by the BBC’s then outgoing director-general Tim Davie, who took a zero-tolerance approach after a string of recent scandals relating to former newsreader Huw Edwards, former MasterChef co-host Gregg Wallace and football commentator Jermaine Jenas.Sara Cox will start her Breakfast Show stint next week.