ALLERGY TO MARRIAGE?
Has TV chef James Martin finally found the woman who will cure him of his
WHEN housewives’ favourite James Martin was seen last weekend browsing the windows of a jewellery shop on Mayfair’s Old Bond Street with his new girlfriend, there was much amusement among his pals.
After all, the handsome TV chef — who has several shows on ITV — has long vowed that marriage is not for him.
Yet just weeks into his new romance with Knightsbridge-based socialite Kim Johnson, and already the pair are visiting one of the world’s most famous shopping destinations for engagement rings, home as it is to upmarket jewellers such as De Beers and Tiffany & Co.
One friend tells me: ‘James has always been adamant he won’t marry, but then he is seen for the first time with Kim outside a jewellery shop. You can imagine the jokes.’
Indeed you can. After all, in keeping with his bluff Yorkshireman persona, Martin has never been shy about saying he thinks marriage to be a total waste of money — and that he’d much rather buy a fancy car than walk down the aisle.
Speaking to one interviewer five years ago, Martin — who started working in kitchens aged just 12 as a pot washer on the Castle Howard estate where his father ran the culinary operation — said of marriage: ‘No, it doesn’t interest me in the slightest, mainly because I’ve catered for so many weddings. I admire people who do it, that’s fine, but I’m quite happy. I don’t need to spend 60 grand on a day, no, I’m more than happy, thanks.
‘My mates come round to my house and they look into my garage and I go, “These are my babies, these are my things,” but you know, it’s each to their own, isn’t it?’
But could this have changed after Martin, 51, was seen, dressed casually in a black gilet and grey baseball cap, deep in conversation with Johnson last Saturday?
What there’s no doubt about is that gruff Martin has fallen for a rather unlikely match.
PERSONAL trainer Johnson — the former wife of Liz Hurley’s multimillionaire businessman ex Arun Nayar — lives a stone’s throw from Harrods. She’s more commonly seen at exclusive London venues such as Annabel’s and Scott’s restaurant — a world away from the cosy pubs beloved by Martin, like Yorkshire’s Stapylton Arms, which he says serves deepfried scampi that’s the ‘best in Britain’.
Their new relationship is a further surprise because Martin only split from his girlfriend of 12 years, Louise Davies, in December, shocking their friends.
Martin had met Davies, a TV producer, on the set of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? in 2011. Shortly after, they moved into an idyllic country house which doubled as Martin’s studio for his ITV programmes, and was considered by both to be their ‘forever home’.
Davies was said to be some of the brains behind his brand, which has reportedly made him a fortune of around £4 million.
One friend said: ‘They always seemed a great match, he was the famous one and she was the woman behind the scenes keeping things going. Louise is well known in the industry and couldn’t be more down-to-earth and lovely. She also seemed to accept that they would never marry, and she adored James.’
So who is the new glamourpuss who has won over Martin? Johnson is perhaps best known for marrying Arun Nayar. She became his third wife in 2016, marrying in a two-day extravaganza on the French Riviera five years after they met, and six years after he and Liz Hurley went their separate ways.
Despite the lavish wedding — one can only imagine what Martin would say about the price-tag for such an event — just a year later, in 2017, Johnson and Nayar split.
Johnson then turned to Prince Andrew’s friend and well-known party girl Caroline Stanbury — who now lives in Dubai and is married to a Spanish footballer some 18 years her junior — to help mend her broken heart. The two women were regularly seen out together on the London social scene. Stanbury isn’t the only one Johnson, 51, has partied with: she’s also had nights out with the Beckhams and was previously spotted with David Gardner, football agent and best friend of David Beckham, at London’s wellknown Beat nightclub.
‘Kim is a real centrepiece of the Knightsbridge socialite set. Everyone knows her,’ a friend told me. ‘Her marriage to Arun really propelled her from being a young woman on the party scene to a bit of a name.
‘She is absolutely beautiful and you will always see Kim in the nicest places where she’ll usually be engrossed in conversation. She’s hugely sociable — a real old school networker who knows practically everyone. She’s the type who just pops to a private member’s bar for a casual evening out.’
Indeed, when in a relationship with Nayar, the couple would regularly nip off to the exclusive Babington House in Somerset for romantic weekends away.
A friend of Martin’s tells me: ‘James is so different to Kim. She’s vibrant and sociable while at times James can be a little bit moody. He couldn’t be less interested in the high life. He’s famous but he is a lot happier at home away from any limelight. But then opposites do attract, so you wouldn’t be surprised if this one lasts.’
Martin — who grew up in the North Yorkshire market town of Malton — has had a rather colourful love life.
The chef once described Barbara
Broccoli — the Hollywood producer and daughter of legendary James Bond producer Albert ‘Cubby’ Broccoli — as the ‘love of my life’.
Martin met Broccoli at a charity auction in 2001 when he was just 29 and a rising star on the culinary scene. She, meanwhile, was 12 years older than him and one of the biggest behind-the-camera names in the film industry.
AMuSINGLY, Broccoli ‘won’ Martin at that auction, paying a jawdropping £18,000 to charity for him to cook her dinner. She was so impressed that she rapidly booked him again to cook her 41st birthday meal — and they just ‘clicked’, according to Martin.
He was then propelled into a world of meeting A-listers such as Nicole Kidman and Halle Berry, with hot and cold running luxuries courtesy of the stupendously wealthy Broccoli. Indeed, she
showered her much younger lover with lavish gifts, including a Picasso painting that Martin had admired at an exhibition they had visited together. She even bought him a Tiffany ring, after he saw it on ronan Keating’s finger during a visit to now defunct TV show Top Of The Pops.
Ironically, though, it was Broccoli’s offer of buying the self-confessed petrolhead an Aston Martin which put an end to their relationship after four and a half years.
‘It wasn’t as if it was my birthday or Christmas, it was just a spur-of-the-moment thought. It was a defining moment in our relationship. Deep down, I knew there was always going to be an imbalance,’ Martin later said.
That said, he admitted that breaking up with Broccoli might well have been the ‘daftest thing I have ever done in my life’.
Writing in his 2009 memoir, Driven, he revealed of their split: ‘It was a big mistake. I stupidly didn’t listen to people and I won’t be doing that again.’
Martin — who is regarded by ITV bosses as a ‘darling’ of the channel, thanks to his appeal to female viewers who turn on in their millions to watch him — went on to date Davies three years later.
While she was undoubtedly less of an A-list name than his previous partner, Martin was smitten, rapidly leaving his hampshire home and moving in with Davies. Friends thought they would be together for ever.
Someone who knows Martin well tells me he prefers to keep away from the cameras when off television: ‘he likes to work and keep his head down when it comes to his private life. he and Louise were just a normal couple. They had normal friends and did normal things like go for nice walks.’
Their split was only revealed on Wednesday, when the pictures of Martin and Johnson emerged. his agent was quick to explain that there had been no crossover, and that he and Davies had quietly gone their separate ways some months before.
For Davies, the split came after some torrid years together. She had loyally stood by Martin
‘James is like catnip to the female viewers’
as he not only battled cancer, but endured accusations of bullying from his ITV colleagues during his cookery show, James Martin’s Spanish Adventure.
It was claimed some members of his crew had been reduced to tears in front of co-workers, and had schedules changed which meant they would only have a few hours of sleep.
Those who worked on the show accused Martin of ‘repeatedly . . . inappropriate, intimidating and bullying behaviour’.
In another alleged incident in 2018, Martin was furious with a member of a film crew after his drain became blocked while filming an episode of James Martin’s Saturday Morning at his home, it was claimed. It was around the time he was undergoing treatment for skin cancer on his face, after it was diagnosed in 2017.
And last November Martin revealed his cancer had returned on several occasions, and he was stepping back from television commitments to ‘get it sorted’.
In a joint statement, Martin and the production company Blue Marlin said that ‘lessons had been learned’ from the allegations.
Despite all this, ITV stood by him. he is, as one employee put it, ‘their golden boy’. An insider there said: ‘James is like catnip to the female viewers. They had to find a way to move on from it all.’
One friend added: ‘It was a really tricky time for James and Louise. She stuck to him like glue — she would go everywhere with him anyway. he had been hiding his cancer from the world and what he went through behind the scenes was very difficult.
‘At that point his career at ITV could have been over, but Louise kept him going.’
Today, Martin’s life seems to have come back together. And while he didn’t manage to crack a smile in this week’s photographs, he is said to be ‘very happy’.
And on Wednesday he was back filming, as he excitedly told his 750,000 Instagram followers.
It appears that he has put his torrid 2023 firmly behind him. What remains to be seen is if the well-connected Johnson could, at last, be the first woman to coax him down the aisle.