Ulrika’s pain
I’m getting divorced for the third time...
Ulrika Jonsson became the darling of Saturday night TV despite her humble beginnings working as a secretary, but her love life always made bigger headlines than any of her professional work.
There was certainly no shortage of men linked to the blonde Swede, even though none of her relationships with them lasted the distance.
And today she reveals her third marriage, to Brian Monet, is now coming to an end after 11 years.
Ulrika started her screen career as a weather girl before becoming team captain on Shooting Stars and presenting Gladiators, one of TV’s biggest shows.
Her romances included one with Prince Edward in the 80s, which she described as a “bit of slap and tickle”.
There were rumours of a tryst with her Shooting Stars sidekick Vic Reeves and she denied she was secretly dating Gladiator Hunter, James Crossley. She later admitted in her 2003 autobiography, Honest, that she was.
When Ulrika married Brian, at the age of 40, she stepped out of the limelight, calling it “self-imposed exile”. It seemed she may have finally settled down.
She explains: “I felt my children needed me more as they got older.
“And while I love working, I didn’t really know where I fitted in as an older woman, with the explosion of social media and reality TV. There was a sort of falling out of love with it.”
But it wasn’t just TV she had fallen out of love with.
Ulrika admitted even marriage guidance counselling couldn’t save the relationship with US advertising executive Brian, 50, the father of her fourth child, 11-year-old Malcolm.
She says: “You can only resolve problems with another person. If I’m honest, getting another divorce at 51 is not where I thought I would be, so who knows? I just don’t know what shape my future will take. I can’t contemplate dating again. Then again, I’ve said I will never marry again before, and I did.”
The pair tied the knot at a private 2008 ceremony in London after they met in Sweden two years earlier. She was pregnant with Malcolm. They then renewed their vows in Barbados in 2012 and she said Brian was “more than just my husband”.
At the time, Ulrika gushed: “He is a jaw-droppingly brilliant father who has the same values of parenthood as I do. His patience knows no bounds, his love for our children is unconditional and their love for him completes our family.”
Two years later Brian adopted her eldest daughter, Bo, 18, whose biological father is German hotel boss Markus Kempen. Ulrika dated him in 2000.
She discovered while five months pregnant their baby had a congenital heart defect and needed major surgery when born. But days after Bo’s birth, Markus announced he was leaving the UK to find work abroad – Ulrika hadn’t even taken the tot home from hospital.
Brian later helped her to raise Bo, named after Ulrika’s father, as his own.
She had her first child Cameron, 24, during her five-year marriage to cameraman John Turnbull and Martha, 14, with second husband, Lance Gerrard-Wright.
Having four children with four different men earned Ulrika the cruel
nickname 4x4. She tells Best Magazine: “OK, I’m biologically a 4x4. But plenty of men father children and then disappear, and they are treated like loveable, if randy, old goats.
“Then women like me, whose romantic dreams have fallen apart, but who work hard to provide loving homes for children, are vilified. I never abandoned my children. They all live with me. I pay for and care for them.
“As for being irresponsible… having a child isn’t a throwaway thought. It’s the absolute opposite, a child is a commitment for life, much more of a commitment than marriage.
“That’s just a piece of paper you can tear up or dissolve. You surrender your body for nine months and remain connected for always.” Ulrika was
married to John from 1990-95 but they split after she cheated. Looking back, she says: “I was unfaithful to John. That is absolutely no defence and knowing what a painful thing it was to go through, I would never do it again to anyone. I look back at the younger me and the selfishness. I didn’t even think of the consequences, that comes with maturity. It was wrong and I’m not defending it, but I was so young when I married the first time... too young, I was only 23.” And there were plenty more tumultuous relationships to come. Ulrika started dating footballer Stan Collymore but they split in 1998 after his assault on her in a bar in Paris. Collymore apologised, blaming his violence on “petulance, jealousy and possibly having too much to drink”.
Ulrika hit headlines once more in 2002 when she had an affair with Swedish England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson. When her autobiography was released, a revelation that a TV presenter raped her in 1998 when she was a 19-year-old trainee weather girl on TV-am, caused a media storm. She said: “I felt a bit foolish.” Matthew Wright accidentally
CONTROVERSY Our story on Leslie being named as rapist. Right, Sven named Blue Peter star John Leslie as the alleged rapist on his TV show The Wright Stuff. Ulrika made no public comment. Leslie denied the allegation and was never even arrested. However his TV career was left in tatters.
While presenting TV dating series Mr Right in 2002, Ulrika met Lance, a bachelor faced with choosing a girlfriend from a group of
women on the show. They tied the knot the following year.
When the pair split in 2005, she declared: “If I ever say I am marrying again, will you please shoot me?” But only two years later she got engaged to Brian. She said: “I have accepted a proposal from my toyboy. I don’t care if people think I’m nuts.” In 2009, Ulrika made a triumphant return to TV beating Terry Christian to win Channel 5’s Celebrity Big Brother. Bookies described the victory as “the biggest shock in reality TV history”. She also came second in Celebrity MasterChef in 2017. Asked if being single again could spark a return to TV, Ulrika replies: “I may do something with cookery, which I love. I’ve been content being out of the limelight. “I haven’t craved it but, that said, I do need to live. And I’m not done yet.”