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‘He Hurt meunbelievably but i’ve moved on’

nthea Turner is late. So late that when she finally arrives for our interview, the apologies pour out of her in a five-minute stream of consciousness.

This slightly nervous monologue is the only indication, at least on the surface, that anything about her has changed since we last met a few years ago when she was very much – rather like the reality show she fronted at the time – Anthea Turner: The Perfect Housewife. Happily married to Grant Bovey, a hugely rich businessman riding the wave of the pre-2008 buy-to-let property boom, she seemed to be living the dream in Barbins Grange, a picture-perfect £10 million Surrey home set in 57 acres.

The make-up – despite having been applied in the car on the way – is faultless, as is everything else about her appearance, from her manicured nails to her tousled blonde hair (in more or less the same style as when she got her first big break on Blue Peter back in 1992). But it quickly becomes clear that this is a very different Anthea.

‘You can’t be the same person you were in your 30s or 40s,’ she says. ‘I’m in my 50s, I’ve had various things happen to me, so of course I’m different – if I wasn’t I’d be a very closed spirit who had learnt nothing.

First came the divorce and now presenter Anthea Turner has had to downsize from a mansion to a modest flat. But she’s not bitter, she tells Jane Gordon

Opposite Anthea today. Above With former husband Grant Bovey at a wedding in 2007

photography: sophia spring

I’m much more emotional these days, I have more empathy and understanding of human nature. I look back on interviews I did on GMTV [she was co-host of the breakfast show from 1994-96] with people who had gone through trauma – lost a child or suffered a life-threatening illness – and although I asked all the right questions and could go through the motions of relating to what they were suffering, I didn’t really understand. Now I would be crying.’

When we arranged our interview, Anthea, now 56, had been keen to move her story on from the divorce that has weighed down her life for the last four years. She has been through therapy, is writing a book (part memoir, part a ‘woman’s guide to divorce’) and is in a new relationship (more of which later), but even so, her life is still blighted by the financial downfall of her husband and the lingering hurt from his affair in 2012.

Moving on has also meant a dramatic downsizing for Anthea – from the couple’s second, £5 million, marital home in Surrey to a three-bedroom flat in Kew. And this amid media speculation that Bovey’s creditors were planning a court action to recover up to £1.6 million from Anthea, in spite of the couple’s divorce last October. How does she feel about her straitened

circumstances? ‘A lot of men – and this is not aimed at Grant – define themselves by their wealth and acquisitions, but women don’t,’ she says. ‘Yes, I have lived in a big, beautiful place with many acres and I’m now in a flat with a tiny balcony, but I don’t think I’m a big failure – it’s a new phase of my life. Yes, I’ve had a bit of a personal ruck Re

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and it hasn’t been good but you have to keep everything in perspective. I don’t have breast cancer, I haven’t lost a leg – I’m still alive and kicking!’

It was, she says, ‘life shattering’ to discover, four years ago, that the man she had stood by when he was declared bankrupt in 2010, had been unfaithful. Still ‘completely and utterly in love and committed to’ the man she had married in 2000 in a wedding sold to OK! magazine(and – infamously – sponsored by Flake), Anthea never suspected his infidelity, until rumours surfaced of an affair with 25-year-old socialite Zoe de Mallet Morgan.

‘I was aware things were wrong in our marriage but I put that down to Grant being in a bad place [his business failed as a result of the property crash in 2008, with debts of £50 million] but I wasn’t aware of infidelity. I’m not a snoopy person; I’ve never looked at someone else’s phone or iPad or computer. And then when I finally did and those rumours were confirmed, I was devastated. I trusted him. I never expected that, never, never, never, EVER!’

This statement seems a little disingenuous considering Anthea’s own relationship with Bovey began in 1998 while he was married to his first wife, Della (and she was married to ex-Radio 1 DJ Peter

Powell), prompting a scandal that would overturn Anthea’s national sweetheart image. But she clearly had no inkling of her husband’s betrayal and, in the months after she discovered it, she fought to save her marriage. Her primary motivation was the fear of losing the stepdaughters (Lily, now 24, Amelia, 23 and Claudia, 19) she had taken on when she married (despite undergoing IVF with Bovey, she was never able to have children of her own).

‘I was fearful of losing the girls. I was fearful of just about everything. These children weren’t my blood and if I had thrown my toys out and started a war, I would have endangered my position in their lives. I worked hard to try to save things but Grant was in

a different place, and I know that if you asked him today, he would say he made a mistake. He’s very open about it: he says he couldn’t see his way out and he hit the self-destruct button. It was a very male thing. Unfortunately he hit it so hard that he couldn’t come back from it.

‘That doesn’t mean I wish him any ill will or that I don’t care about him. Last month it was Amelia’s birthday and we all – Grant, Della and her new boyfriend, me and the girls – went out for a meal. I don’t ever want to be in a position where we can’t do that. Grant and I were together for 16 years; it went horribly wrong but we did have good times, we have a connection through the girls and I am a decent person.

Yes, he hurt me unbelievably but you have to move on,’ she says.

Anthea’s new flat is now a home from home for her stepdaughters.

She relishes the relationship she has with them now that they are ‘three women rather

than three girls’. ‘I would have fought like a lioness not to lose them,’ says

Anthea. ‘It disturbed the girls greatly when they saw me crumble. There came a point where I had to let my G

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From below With Bovey and his daughters in Downing Street, 2006; on Blue Peter in 1993

‘I was fearful of losing the girls. I was fearful of just about everything’

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and it’ll be fine. HRT is amazing stuff, I’ll be on it till I’m 80, I’ll never stop!’

Life has taken precedence over her TV work for the past couple of years. She has been presenting the successful Canadian Food Network series Dinner Party Wars but now feels ready to embark on a new phase of her career and is in discussions about television projects in the UK. ‘My dream job would be to present a kind of grown-up Blue Peter, or something like Countryfile – I’ve always been happiest out filming in jeans and Timberlands. I still love what I do

and I have a lot left to give, which is just as well because I’ll probably have to work for the rest of my life,’ she says with a grin.

Her recent experiences have made her self-aware. ‘Maybe [my life] was all too perfect; maybe it’s a good thing that people can see that I’m fallible,’ she admits. ‘I’ve made good use of my annus horribilis, learnt from it, but at the same time been rejuvenated by it. It’s been a kind of rebirth. I have a greater understanding and love of life – and that is very positive.’

your 50s there isn’t the same neediness as when you’re younger.

‘This is the deal: I have my career, my family, my friends, and you can come into my life if you’re going to enhance it, but don’t mess it up. David is enhancing my life. He’s a lovely man, a very interesting man, and I massively respect his work. He’s an awesome photographer and I’m very proud of him. It’s good that we’re at the same stage in life because we’re singing from the same hymn sheet in a way we wouldn’t if there was a big age difference.’

Slim and still girlishly pretty, Anthea admits to being vain and is keen to make the most of what she has for as long as possible. At one point she demonstrates how her love of Botox has left her incapable of frowning: ‘This is me looking angry,’ she says, as her face refuses to do anything but smile.

She regards post-menopausal life as liberating. ‘My attitude is that you don’t need to “survive” the menopause, you should enjoy it. Unless you have medical problems, go and get yourself some HRT

hurt show and they had to see me as a vulnerable human being. It hurt and unsettled them but our relationship is stronger than ever now that we’re four women who have a bond. I’m very proud of them, they’re a great testament to everyone who had a hand in bringing them up.

‘Last night, Amelia had a little party at my flat and when everyone had gone, the four of us sat out on the balcony drinking rosé and nattering. That is the most precious thing in the world. Money can’t buy that.’

Having gone through such a public marital breakdown, she is understandably nervous of saying too much about the new man in her life, 54-year-old wildlife photographer David Yarrow, but her eyes light up when she talks about him. They met by chance through a friend at The Ivy bar, on a ‘bad day’ last autumn. A negative press comment had left Anthea feeling down and that she ‘needed something to smile about’. Yarrow made her smile.

‘It’s important to me to be cautious, and to David, too. We are grown-ups,’ she says. ‘He’s been parted from his ex-wife for 11 years, he has two children. I’ve met them and they’re great. He’s away a lot working and I’m fine with that. I’ve become a very contained person. When you enter into a relationship in

‘You should enjoythe menopause – HRT is amazing stuff, I’ll be on it till I’m 80’

Below The home Anthea shared with Grant Bovey. Inset With stepdaughter Lily in 2012 – she has stayed close to Bovey’s three girls

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