Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
GALLACHER’S
Clad all in black, with her hands shoved firmly in the pockets of her rain mac, Kirsty Gallacher cut a solemn figure as she left Slough magistrates court with a conviction for drink-driving.
Police had found her to be more than three times the legal limit at 11am on August 12 as she drove her £40,000 BMW X4 to meet her children.
And next week the 41-year-old Sky presenter and ex-strictly Come Dancing star will head to court once again, this time to attend a hearing about her bitter divorce from Paul Sampson, 40.
They split in 2014 after four years of marriage, and Kirsty’s lawyer, Jennifer Dempster, cited “difficulties” her client had faced in the divorce, as she asked for leniency on the drink-drive sentence.
A source says: “The ongoing legal battles following the divorce have been hell. It’s felt like a constant weight on her shoulders for the past three years and she’s constantly exhausted from it.”
It is clear the last couple of years have been anything but easy.
She had more bad luck in love with a short-lived relationship with rugby star Danny Cipriani, 29. Kirsty was also forced to take legal action after she was accused of being drunk when she collapsed in a corridor at Sky’s studios.
She had actually been taken ill with a viral infection, but her publicist was forced to state: “Blood and urine tests at hospital showed no alcohol.”
No wonder then that during the drink-drive hearing, which landed her a two-year ban, Ms Dempster told how it had been a “stressful time” for Kirsty.
The daughter of Ryder Cup champion dad Bernard and dietician mum Lesley, privately-schooled Kirsty had an idyllic childhood and a steady rise to fame.
Her dad reckoned she could have been a golf pro, too, but she studied at the London College of Fashion before a chance meeting at a Ryder Cup event led to a screen test with Sky. In 1998, she landed a job on Sky Sports News.
Kirsty, who was also a lads’ mags pin-up, proved herself a talented anchor, and a string of TV jobs on shows such as 90 Minutes, Soccer Extra, Gladiator, The Games and GMTV, followed. She had met rugby player Paul at a charity event in 1999 and in 2006 they had their first child, Oscar, now 10.
His birth was blighted by the “scary” postpartum thyroiditis she suffered. She said: “I was in pain. I was like an old woman. I had the shakes, it was awful.”
In 2009, when Kirsty was pregnant with their second son, Jude, now seven, Paul proposed. In 2010, they wed at her parents’ home in Seville, Spain.
Having set up home in Virginia Water, Surrey, in 2012, Kirsty spoke of expanding their family with “more kids, more hens and more dogs”. But in 2013, dad