Jeremy Kyle to marry his children’s ex-nanny
AS THE host of a television tabloid talk show, Jeremy Kyle has become something of an expert in dissecting the dysfunctional relationships of others.
Away from the cameras, however, the 52-year- old presenter’s romantic shenanigans are in danger of overshadowing those of his feckless guests.
In the latest gripping instalment of his tangled private life, fatherof-four Kyle is set to marry for a third time after proposing to his children’s former nanny in the Caribbean last weekend.
The woman set to become the third Mrs Kyle is 36-year-old Vicky Burton, who used to work for Kyle and his second wife, Carla Germaine, at the family home in Berkshire and accompanied the Kyles on holiday to Barbados. The couple began dating in 2016 – a year after Kyle’s 13-year marriage to 42-year- old Carla ended amid revelations of her infidelity.
Kyle and Vicky are said to be ‘ecstatically happy’ after news of their engagement emerged.
‘ He chose the Grenadines because it’s a very romantic place,’ a source told The Sun yesterday. ‘ Both set of families are absolutely chuffed for them.’
This happy turn of events comes on the back of a tumultuous few years for the acerbic presenter, whose net worth is said to be £4million. Aside from dealing with the fallout of two failed marriages – and claims that he was a gambling addict and a control freak – Kyle has successfully battled testicular cancer after undergoing gruelling chemotherapy.
His engagement is unlikely to find favour with everyone, however. The second Mrs Kyle declined to speak to the Mail at the family home in Windsor yesterday, but she has previously expressed her disapproval of her ex-husband’s relationship with the former nanny.
‘There are moral boundaries and integrity,’ she fumed last year when the relationship became public.
‘I’m in shock. She was my nanny for nine years. She looked after my babies. We were best friends.’
Indeed, scratch the surface of Kyle’s life and it begins to read like an episode of his long-running ITV show. His first marriage in 1989 to secretary Kirsty Holt lasted barely two years. The cracks appeared as early as their honeymoon in the Maldives, when Kirsty threw her wedding ring into the sea after a blazing row.
In a 2007 interview, she claimed that while they were engaged, privately educated Kyle, whose father worked as an accountant to the Queen Mother, had lied to her about having a heart condition. ‘He even showed me a brown bottle of pills. I was completely shattered,’ she said. ‘I was just so shocked and felt terrible for him. I suppose it made me want to marry him all the more. I believed he didn’t have long to live.’
She was pregnant when she discovered her husband was a gambling addict, after trying – and failing – to take money out of a cashpoint to buy maternity clothes. Kyle had run up a £4,500 debt at the bookies and on phone lines. He admitted his addiction in his 2009
‘He lived in a fantasy world’
autobiography I’m Only Being Honest and said he was a ‘reckless and selfish husband’ to Kirsty.
Their marriage fell apart in 1990 when their daughter Harriet was just five months old.
‘The whole marriage had become completely bizarre,’ she said in 2007. ‘It was surreal. He lived in a fantasy world because it was better than his own life.
‘The man I married wouldn’t have been out of place as a guest on his own show. The programme is crass and embarrassing and for Jeremy to act like some kind of agony uncle is sheer hypocrisy.’
The circumstances under which Kyle met Birmingham-born model Carla were not exactly straightforward either. Carla, then 23, had a brief turn in the spotlight in 1999 after taking part in a ‘blind marriage’ competition called Two Strangers and a Wedding run by the Birmingham radio station BRMB where Kyle was making a name for himself as a fledgling DJ.
Carla and fellow contestant, 28-year-old sales consultant Greg Cordell, were married live on air and won a car, a honeymoon and a rent-free year in a luxury apartment. The marriage collapsed three months later but by then Carla had met Kyle.
‘I met my wife in the most bizarre circumstances,’ the presenter later admitted. ‘One day we are going to sit our kids down and tell them Mummy married a stranger on a radio show in Birmingham.’
Carla and Kyle married in 2002, had three children and set up home. For several years it seemed he had found lasting love.
‘In Carla, I have a wife in whom I can confide about anything,’ he said, and paid tribute to her during his cancer treatment in 2012. But public cracks in the marriage appeared in June 2015 when he blurted out on his show that he ‘hadn’t had sex for ages’.
Just days after announcing their separation with ‘ sadness and regret’ in September 2015, came revelations that Carla, who was 40 at the time, had enjoyed a fling with hunky 25-year- old England polo player James Carr. Their trysts, claimed Mr Carr in a kiss-and-tell interview, were ‘amazing’ but ‘didn’t mean anything’.
Kyle and Carla were granted a ‘quickie divorce’ in February 2016. She cited his ‘unreasonable behaviour’ as the grounds for the breakdown of the marriage. Vicky quit as the family nanny in April 2016, and is said to have started dating Kyle towards the end of that year.
But despite making a fortune by persuading others to air their dirty linen in public, Kyle is reluctant to speak about his own love life.
When questioned about his relationship with Vicky on ITV’s Loose Women last year, he cut the conversation short, saying: ‘It’s a new relationship, a new chapter. I’m very happy, thank you very much.
‘Let’s move on with our lives.’