SISTERS AT WAR MY FEUD OVER MONEY WITH TV’S ANTHEA
Sisters and TV stars Anthea and Wendy Turner used to be very close. But they had a terrible falling out, as Wendy now explains
THE sister of TV’s Anthea Turner has lifted the lid on the feud which has torn their family apart. Presenter Wendy Turner Webster has not spoken to her older sister for almost two years after a fall-out over money she owes the former GMTV and Blue Peter star.
And now she has accused Anthea, 58, of putting her under such “intolerable pressure” to pay back the debt – said to be tens of thousands of pounds – that it is damaging her mental health.
Wendy, 51, and best known for presenting Channel 4’s Pet Rescue, says: “I’m profoundly hurt my own sister could behave in a way that has taken me to the edge of madness. It’s why I’ve had to cut all ties with Anthea – and it gives me no pleasure whatever to have to say that in public.
“As I sit here today, all I feel is sadness and regret and bitter disappointment that money could have come between us quite so catastrophically.”
The story of the sisters’ falling out begins with a loan Anthea made to Wendy, whose actor husband Gary Webster, appeared in Minder and EastEnders. He needed a substantial sum to put them on a firm financial footing while he waited for payment of a commission from a business deal.
“Don’t get me wrong,” says Wendy. “We will always be eternally grateful to Anthea for helping us out of what we truly believed was a temporary hole. We would never, ever have accepted the loan if we were in any doubt about being able to repay it.” But when the commission was not forthcoming, and the subject of impending legal action, the Turner Websters were left in such dire financial straits they were forced to borrow from not only Anthea but other family members and close friends as well to keep their heads above water.
Against this backdrop, what Wendy needed from her sister, she says, was a bit of compassion. “But what I got was more and more intolerable pressure from her to repay our debt. She knew it was something we were working hard to achieve. And yet, she turned the screws tighter and tighter.
“She bombarded us with emails and phone calls demanding to know when she was going to get her money back. All we could do was apologise and assure her we were working night and day to achieve just that.
“It was putting Gary’s stress levels through the roof which was concerning me greatly, particularly as he’d had a heart attack in 2012.
“And I have a history of clinical depression. So Anthea exerting continual pressure sent me into a downward spiral.
“Eventually, I was taking a dose of Sertraline, four times higher than my original prescription. Anthea was aware of all of this but she did nothing to show me an ounce of sympathy or understanding.
“I deliberately tried to avoid contact with her for my own self-preser-
‘One day I realised that, if I didn’t sever all links with her, I wouldn’t be able to withstand the pressure any longer’
vation. Then, one day, I realised that if I didn’t sever all links with her, even temporarily, I wouldn’t be able to withstand the pressure any longer.”
Sadly relations between the sisters hit rock bottom after a recent newspaper report. Anthea, it said, had “furiously cut contact” with her younger sister, having been forced to pay another £5,000 debt of Wendy’s after acting as guarantor on a flat.
AFRIEND told the paper: “As far as Anthea is concerned, enough is enough. In the end, she snapped and has severed all ties.”
The truth is quite different, says Wendy. “There are two sides to every story. I’ve sat by in silence for over two years now as Anthea painted me as some sort of inept wastrel when it comes to my finances.
“Well, this time she’s crossed a line and I’m not prepared to stay silent any longer.”
So why had Wendy and Gary got themselves into such a financial pickle in the first place?
Says Wendy: “We had a bad credit rating and wanted to take out a rental lease on a property in west London. The only way round it was to offer a much bigger deposit as a down payment.
“We were also paying around £35,000 a year for the education of our two sons – Jack is 19, Freddie, 15 – at a private school. They were both doing so well and were so happy there, we didn’t want to move them if we could possibly avoid it.
“Yes, Gary and I were both working on and off although long gone are the fancy sums that TV used to pay. I’m certainly not paid today what I used to get for Pet Rescue.
“The result was that our earnings were swallowed up in rent and bills and school fees and ruinous repayments to loan sharks. At best, we were only ever treading water.”
Desperately worried about their finances, Wendy couldn’t believe her sister was adding to the pressure, she says. And it’s made worse, she added, by the fact that their middle sister, Ruth, who was born with spina bifida, died when she was 15.
“I’d already lost one sister – I was 11 at the time – which means that Anthea was even more precious to me.
“I’d been jogging along for years feeling love and affection for my surviving sister. But the killer blow to me was that the feeling was clearly not mutual. When it comes down to it, money is apparently more important to her than blood.”
One of the results of the big bustup has been that the sisters’ parents, Brian and Jean, became piggyin-the-middle, says Wendy.
A retired businessman, Brian is 85. His 88-year-old wife, a former secondary school teacher, had a stroke two-and-a-half years ago.
Wendy adds: “I begged them to stay out of my quarrel with Anthea because I didn’t want them to be under any undue stress.
“Anthea’s always been of a fiery disposition. She’s strong-willed although that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Look at the success she’s made of herself.
“It’s misplaced, though, when it comes to her intolerance in dealing with her own sister. What’s more, I think she’s got worse as she’s got older and certainly since her marriage to Grant started going so disastrously wrong.”
Anthea, once TV’s golden girl, has been married twice, first to DJ Peter Powell, then suffering the humiliation of her second husband Grant Bovey embarking on an affair with 26-year-old Zoe De Mallet Morgan, a woman young enough to be his daughter. The marriage never recovered and they divorced in October 2015. Throughout all the marriage turmoil Wendy says she was there for her elder sister, claiming she sometimes fielded as many as five or six tearful phone calls from her a day and saying she rushed to her flat in Kew, to hold her hand as Anthea sobbed.
“Then there was the time I was trying to reach her but she wasn’t reacting to phone messages or emails. I got more and more worried. Surely she wouldn’t do something stupid, would she?
“So I drove round to her flat and she was all cheery, saying she hadn’t heard the phone because she’d been blow-drying her hair. Her mood was up and down all the time. I vividly remember the feeling of relief when I realised she was OK.
“But look, I’m not expecting a medal. I was doing what anyone would do for their sister. She was at her lowest ebb and I made myself available for her at all times of day and night.”
The Turner Webster family do still have money coming in. Wendy is preparing the next series of Crafty Beggars, which she co-presents with Julie Peasgood on the satellite channel Together TV. She also has a series called Romanian Dog Rescue coming out next spring on the same channel.
And over Christmas the family will be house-sitting but their poor credit rating means until recently they have been forced to live in two rooms in a Travelodge in west London. “There were no cooking
facilities so we had to buy prepared supermarket meals, and no washing machine.
“The hotel bill came to hundreds of pounds a week – almost double what we’d be paying if we rented somewhere – and we’re also having to pay to keep all our furniture in storage. But at least we’ve been able to stay together as a family.”
And where has Anthea been in Wendy’s hour of need? “Nowhere to be seen. I’m not talking about money. I’m talking about the sort of emotional support I gladly gave her when she was going through a bad time.”
SUPPOSING the commission Gary says he is owed suddenly comes through? How would that impact on Wendy’s relationship with her sister?
“If everything between us became bright and bubbly and normal after that, wouldn’t that simply show it was only ever about the money?”
Anthea and her team declined to comment on Wendy’s claims. However, a close friend said: “Anthea will be devastated to hear her sister has sold this story when she has consistently supported Wendy financially over decades.
“Their elderly parents in particular will be heartbroken to read Wendy’s twisted version of events after everything Anthea has done to help them.”