Sorry Paul — it will all end in tears
As Bake Off star’s romance with a barmaid 30 years his junior goes public, his estranged wife’s family give the Mail their withering verdict . . .
TAKe a barmaid 30 years your junior, a passion for motorbikes and an increasingly nasty divorce. Yes, Great British Bake Off judge Paul Hollywood, 52, has assembled all the ingredients for a perfectly cliched mid-life crisis.
Spotted this week stopping off for a cup of tea in full motorbike leathers at H’s cafe in Barham, Kent, he cut his usual self-satisfied figure. Indeed, sources at Channel 4 say his cat-who-got-the-cream demeanour has been more noticeable than ever since last summer.
Why? Well, it seems that he is feeling very smug about striking up a relationship with a fun-loving, flame-haired, 22-year-old barmaid, the exotically named Summer Monteys-Fullam who, it transpired this week, credits Hollywood with turning her ‘from a girl into a woman’.
It is anyone’s guess whether the GBBO judge’s latest round of romantic antics come as any surprise to his estranged wife Alex.
She has reportedly engaged the services of one of Britain’s most ferocious divorce lawyers in a bid to hang on to the family home and more than half of the telly baker’s reputed £10 million fortune.
Perhaps some insight into the mindset of his long-suffering wife can be gained from her brother, Simon Moores, who broke his silence this week to tell the Mail: ‘I am sure it will all end in tears.’
If so, it won’t be the first time. Having rekindled their marriage after Hollywood’s brief affair, in 2013, with U.S. TV chef Marcela Valladolid, Paul and Alex declared in 2015 that they were happier than ever.
He later said: ‘It was the biggest mistake of my life because actually I still love my wife.’
But that was before Hollywood was introduced to Ms Monteys-Fullam, who bears a striking resemblance to Bake Off winner Candice Brown, whom Hollywood was seen kissing warmly at the end of an awards ceremony last year.
The new couple appear to have met in May last year at Hollywood’s local pub, the Duke William in Ickham, Kent, where Ms Monteys-Fullam worked as a barmaid.
With breathtaking irony, Hollywood had called in to organise a birthday party for his wife.
A close friendship grew between him and Summer, whose stepfather is the same age as Hollywood, with Paul treating his new young ‘mate’ and a group of her girlfriends to a champagne night out last summer at The Pound pub in Canterbury. He settled the entire bill.
And for her 22nd birthday in May last year, Hollywood loaned Summer the use of his chauffeur-driven RollsRoyce so she could have an evening out in style. Sometime later the pair enjoyed dinner and drinks at The Dorchester hotel in London.
It appears that Hollywood was unconcerned about the unconventional nature of their three-decade age-gap, apparently explaining to Alex, 53, that his time spent with Summer amounted to ‘work’.
Alex, it seems, was led to believe that Summer was acting as her husband’s new personal assistant.
Whatever the truth, it seems that this new friendship contributed to the end of the couple’s 20-year marriage. Last November, Paul and Alex declared they had split.
Pointedly, their brief statement did not insist that there was no third party involved in the break-up (although associates asserted at the time that he and Summer had ‘only ever’ been friends).
HOWeVeR, with news this week that Hollywood and Summer were spotted recently on a £1,000-a-night holiday at the Four Seasons Hotel in Mauritius, such claims look a little threadbare.
Apparently the pair — who flew out separately — shared a villa for ten days, avoiding the hotel’s pool and public areas in a bid to keep attention to a minimum.
But what are we to make of Summer’s rather rambling post on a (now deleted) Instagram account on New Year’s eve? In it, she wrote: ‘I can only thank the people that are close to me. Including my amazing boyfriend. You have turned me from a girl to a woman, and to a house woman. I love you so much!
‘This post is not for likes but the love of my life. I am truly a lucky girl and have the best things and people and animals around me, 2018.’
Sources close to Alex say that while news of a new woman on her husband’s arm comes as no surprise, she is devastated that the girl in question is so young.
In an irony surely not lost on Hollywood’s wife, Summer was born in 1996, the year the couple fell for each other while working in Cyprus.
AFRIeND of Alex says: ‘This was a big bombshell for her,’ adding that Alex was particularly upset over being led to believe that Summer was acting as her husband’s PA.
Alex now feels that she was spun a line — particularly humiliating, given her forgiveness after his last public transgression with Marcela — and is determined to press ahead with a divorce action that will hit her husband hard in the wallet.
To this end, she is said to have engaged legendary divorce lawyer Raymond Tooth, nicknamed ‘Jaws’ by his colleagues, for having the sharpest teeth in the business.
Tooth is a man in demand, being renowned for landing ex-wives huge settlements.
He secured a £150 million settlement for Irina Abramovich following her split from Russian oligarch Roman and £15 million for eimear Montgomerie, the ex of golfer Colin.
Alex is apparently taking inspiration from his maxim: ‘Don’t get mad, get everything.’
Supported by a tight-knit group of female friends, she is said to be determined to secure a big settlement for herself and their son Josh, 16.
‘Her friends are telling her she put her career on hold to support him and is entitled to it all,’ says one pal.
It’s said that she’s happy for Paul to keep his collection of cars and bikes — his pride and joy is a blue £135,000 Aston Martin — but she wants to hang on to their £1.4million farmhouse in east Kent and secure half his fortune. She thinks her husband’s wealth is far greater than the £10 million it is generally estimated to be and is said to be hoping for between £6 million and £12 million.
Based in Mayfair, the ferocious Tooth, 77, arrives for work in a chauffeured Mercedes. Cigar-chomping and flamboyant, he advises all his clients to settle out of court, and is a great believer in pre-nuptial agreements for marriages of wealth. There
is no pre-nup in this case. When Hollywood and Alex wed in 1998, he was an obscure baker and she helped him run his business. Her friends say that, for some time, she helped write his recipe books.
However, pressures grew when success finally arrived, as he was paired with Mary Berry in the first Great British Bake Off series in 2010, and found himself an overnight sex symbol.
Dedication to his career, which has seen him work away from home filming for much of the year, has also been blamed for strains within their marriage. Whereas Hollywood’s British Baking book, released in 2014 soon after he and Alex were reunited, bore the dedication ‘For Alex’, she wasn’t mentioned in The Weekend Baker, released in May 2016, which was dedicated: ‘To my son Josh.’
A Baker’s Life, which came out in early November, was dedicated: ‘To my nan Amy and my mum Gill, you’ve been there from the start of the journey. Big love to you.’
Friends of Alex, who remains in the family home and is determined to let the dramas play out in private, think she will sail through the split. A sophisticated woman — Alex speaks French, Italian and Spanish — and rather formidable, she is described as ‘no nonsense’ and determined not to be emotionally ‘squashed’ again by her husband.
In the aftermath of his first affair, it is said Hollywood did not offer any kind of proper public apology and was not keen for Alex to take up the many offers of TV work that came her way.
Her inner circle insist she will not be deterred again and has plans to launch a media career of her own. Plans for a third cookbook (she released her first two after the couple reconciled) are well advanced.
She is still debating whether she needs to keep the Hollywood surname. It is said she would prefer not to.
The Monteys-Fullams are also keen to keep a low profile.
Summer’s mother Sabina, 47 — a laser hair removal specialist as well as part-owner of a tattoo removal business — answered the door of the family’s £600,000 mock-Tudor semi-detached cottage and said: ‘I’ll save you some time, no comment.’
Locals say the family are noted for being rather flashy. Older sister Saskia, who works for a kitchen designer, wears a diamondstudded Rolex watch.
As for Hollywood himself, he will do his utmost to keep on selling himself as everyone’s favourite dough-boy. Plans to break America on an ABC version of GBBO called the Great American Baking Show failed after his co-host Johnny Iuzzini was accused of sexual harassment, leading to the programme being removed from the schedules.
Hollywood’s solo TV outing, A Baker’s Life, on Channel 4, was widely derided as a tiresome ego trip and drew only middling audiences. One critic said that he had more than a touch of (fictional The Office character) David Brent about him.
He still has his fans, though. Bake Off presenter Sandi Toksvig said: ‘He’s lovely, I’m in love with him. He’s such a teddy bear.
‘Never mind about the steely blue eyes, he’s just a great big cuddly bear. He’s a good man.’
But it seems that not everyone would agree.