How Kirsty came out fighting
Floored by a bitter divorce and a conviction for drink-driving, the TV favourite feared she was down and out. But now she’s back with a hunky boxer boyfriend... and a stunning new job
THE tearful woman who walked into Slough Magistrates Court that day in September 2017 was almost unrecognisable. Dressed entirely in black, shoulders hunched and with her collar pulled up to her ears, most would have struggled to pick out Kirsty Gallacher, the Sky sports presenter and daughter of Scots sporting legend Bernard Gallacher.
And why should they? Gallacher, after all, was a model for exercise and clean living, a happygo-lucky TV presenter who seemingly had it all. She was just about the last celebrity you would expect to be up on a drink-driving charge.
As she later reflected: ‘It was very bad and very un-Kirsty because I have always been a good girl.’
Less than four years on from that difficult day, Gallacher is once again riding high.
She has a new beau, the former world boxing champion Johnny Nelson, and is said to be so loved up that, at 45, she is considering another baby.
She also has a high-profile new job – as part of the breakfast team on the soon-to-be launched GB News channel.
‘I’ve been in a black hole for a while,’ she said recently. ‘But now I can see daylight again.’
It is seven-and-a-half years since Gallacher received a call which would change her life.
Her father had suffered a heart attack while attending a golf event in Aberdeen. It was critical.
Gallacher boarded the first available flight to the city and rushed to her father’s bedside.
‘Even when I was there they couldn’t say what was going to happen,’ she recalled later.
‘All they could tell me was he was in an induced coma. They warned us that we should prepare for the worst.’
For a week, Gallacher slept on a couch by her father’s bedside, alongside her mother Lesley and sister Laura, willing him to survive.
‘Sky Sports News was on with a ticker running saying, “Gallacher in a coma”. It wasn’t nice to see,’ she recalled. ‘It was very tough.’
Gallacher senior pulled through, going on to have a mini-defibrillator attached to his heart and live a relatively normal life.
But although her father made a recovery, his illness was to have long-term repercussions in Gallacher’s own life.
Less than a year later, after 14 years together, four of them married, Gallacher split with her husband and father of her two children, Paul Sampson.
SHE attributed the break-up to her father’s heart attack, saying: ‘When things like that happen to you in your life, you change. Experiences change you and you just kind of realise that some things work and others don’t.
‘It’s a lovely idea to think you’ll be happy forever in a situation, but that’s not always the way life works out. My dad’s experience taught me that life is short, and realising that changed me as a person.
‘Things evolve and there is no right or wrong. I think you have to do the right thing for yourself and your family and be happy.
‘Happiness is the key; if you’re not happy your kids won’t be happy, that’s for sure. It’s so important.’
Gallacher met England rugby player Sampson at a charity event in 1999. She had only recently started working in front of the camera, following an accidental meeting at a Ryder Cup dinner three years earlier with Mark Sharman, the deputy head of sport at Sky.
She spent two years working in production before moving into presenting, going on to become the host of shows such as Soccer AM, 90 Minutes, Soccer Extra and The Games. Gallacher and Sampson went on to have two children – sons Oscar, now 14, and Jude, now 11. They married after nine years together at her parents’ clifftop home in Spain.
With their glittering careers and lavish home in the Surrey countryside, which Gallacher said she wanted to fill with ‘more kids, more hens and more dogs’, it seemed the perfect life.
‘Someone said to me that it feels no different after marriage,’ Sampson said after their wedding. ‘But the bond Kirsty and I have is definitely stronger now, which feels amazing after nine years.’
Yet shortly after the marriage, cracks started to appear.
Gallacher’s career was soaring, and she was spending more time away from home.
Sampson, meanwhile, had retired from professional rugby and was finding it difficult to adjust.
‘When you come to the end of your career you think you’re a bit washed up,’ he said later.
‘It was a tough time. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.’ By the time Bernard Gallacher had his heart attack, the couple were struggling and, a year later, they made the difficult to split.
‘It put things in perspective and made me feel I didn’t want to waste my life,’ Gallacher said. ‘I seriously asked myself whether I decision was really happy.’ Single again after 14 years in a relationship, there were a few ill-advised flings – including a six-month dalliance with rugby player and notorious man about town, Danny Cipriani.
They parted due, apparently, to ‘age differences’ – he is 12 years younger – and allegations that Cipriani had been sending flirtatious texts to a reality TV star.
But although she was dipping a toe into life as a single woman, Gallacher’s divorce continued to cast a long shadow.
‘Divorce has been a very difficult
My dad’s heart attack taught me that life is short... and realising that changed me
time. I thought it was devastating,’ she said in an interview. ‘I was in mourning. I think I had posttraumatic stress disorder.
‘I was skinny, not eating and wanting to blacken everything. It was painful.
‘I felt a burden and sadness for my children, even though I did nothing wrong and Sammo did nothing wrong. No one was to blame.’
She dealt with the pain in an unusual and somewhat public way: by signing up for Strictly Come Dancing.
While she did well, dancing up a storm with partner Brendan Cole and being voted off fifth, in retrospect, she said it felt like a mistake.
‘It was a horrible moment and I was distressed for the kids,’ she said. ‘I was doing Strictly Come Dancing that I loved, but I certainly shouldn’t have done it.
‘It was not the right time. I was an absolute nervous, skinny wreck.
‘I didn’t take time off work so I didn’t have time to rehearse the dances properly, I was constantly worrying about my children. It all tipped me over the edge.’
In the aftermath there was a rumoured fling with actor and activist Laurence Fox – never confirmed by either camp – as well as a short relationship with the comedian Jack Whitehall and continued difficulties over finances in the wake of the divorce.
‘After the divorce, I catapulted myself into these relationships,’ she said in 2019.
‘I wasn’t used to being on my own and I was looking for validation because I was a little bit wobbly – when I came out of a relationship I’d always be like, “Where’s the next one?”.’
It all culminated on that morning in August 2017 when she was stopped by police for driving her BMW erratically at around 11am on her way to meet her sons, who had been staying with their father. ‘I was in a very bad place with the divorce and issues to do with the children’s schedule,’ she said. ‘I was exhausted – I’d worked really hard that week.’
She was found to be three times over the drink-driving limit. It later emerged that she had gone straight to the pub after work.
‘I’m not good with alcohol – a couple of glasses, that’s me – but one of my friends was celebrating something, so we carried on drinking wine,’ she said later.
She caught a taxi home and then booked another the next morning to pick up her car.
‘I took all the precautions and I felt absolutely fine,’ she said.
‘But I hadn’t slept very well that night. I was so stressed, I hadn’t eaten much and when you’re going through all these things your body metabolises differently, so my system wasn’t all right. If I’d known that I wouldn’t have got in my car.’ The moment when police pulled her over is one that still haunts her.
‘The whole thing was horrific,’ she said. ‘I misjudged what I was doing. I felt I was going to be all right. I wasn’t thinking straight.’
Gallacher ultimately received a two-year driving ban, reduced to 18 months, and 100 hours of community service.
She left Sky a year later, after more than 20 years with the channel.
Meanwhile, her younger sister Laura had settled into a life of domestic, if unlikely, bliss with her husband Russell Brand and their two young children.
The two sisters are best friends and, curiously, it was from her brother-in-law that a piece of useful advice came.
‘We’re very close, we all help each other and Russell said, “It’s time for passion projects, to do what you want to do”,’ Gallacher said.
‘When there’s a lull, he says, “It doesn’t matter, you’ll get asked to do something soon”.’
She branched out, going freelance and hosting podcasts, guestpresenting and fronting the celebrity charity football tournament Soccer Aid.
The break also gave her more time to focus on being a mother.
‘It’s great to work and to be a role model to your children but if you’re not spending time with them it becomes, “Why am I doing this?”,’ she said. ‘Now I’m busy doing all sorts of things but I can still be more of a mummy, doing the school runs, cooking more. It’s a much healthier existence.’
Her new slot on the breakfast show on GB News, which is chaired by Andrew Neil and set to begin broadcasting on Freeview channel 236 later this year, will likely tie in with that lifestyle.
Certainly she is now older and wiser, recently admitting that one of the biggest regrets of her life was appearing in lads’ magazines.
‘I wish I’d had the strength of character to refuse them,’ she said. ‘I remember feeling completely embarrassed by the photos.’
ASouRCe said this week that Gallacher and Nelson, 54, a former cruiserweight champion who now works as a Sky boxing pundit, are extremely loved up.
‘They have kept it quiet but Kirsty and Johnny’s relationship is going great guns,’ the insider said.
‘They are really keen on each other and friends and family think the romance is for keeps.
‘They have a lot in common, obviously sports and keeping fit.
‘Kirsty is a big boxing fan and finds Johnny funny and charming.’
Intriguingly, Gallacher says she has not ruled out another baby at the age of 45.
Speaking last week on a podcast, she said: ‘I’d love another child.
‘I feel completely ready for it. I feel healthier than ever, fitter than ever, I think my mind’s better than it’s ever been.
‘Sometimes when you have rough patches in your life… as long as you learn, come through it, and get yourself back in a strong place again, you feel rather good.’
Kirsty the good girl, it seems, is back to stay.