DOG’S DINNER
Valentine’s Day Van Outen fury as lover serves up a
DENISE van Outen’s lover was left with his tail between his legs after dishing up a Valentine’s Day dinner in a dog bowl.
Eddie Boxshall sent TV presenter Denise, 46, barking mad with his own presentation skills.
And the avid social media fan was so aghast she could not even bear to share a snap of the sushi with her 540,000 Instagram followers.
She fumed: “I can’t take a picture of this, it looks disgusting.”
Denise said of the meal: “It looked like it’d been taken out of the bin. He’d laid it out nicely – but in a dog bowl.”
She added: “When I sat at the table, he brought out… I’ve never seen such a mismatch, a mix of bowls and plates.
“I don’t even know which cupboard he got it from.
“One of the bowls had a chip in it, another one – get this – we used to put the dog food in to feed Tilly, our French bulldog, when she was a puppy.
“So we had an argument. We’ve only ever had two big arguments. That being one of them, very recently.”
It looked like it had been taken out of
the bin
Romantic
Denise says Eddie, 46, had insisted he lay the table for their romantic meal.
She revealed in an interview: “I’d taken out of the cupboard a really nice dinner set that’s for special occasions.
“So I said, Eddie, we’ve got really nice plates… we’d ordered some sushi because we thought, let’s treat ourselves for Valentine’s Day. I went out to work, came back, and he’s like, ‘Don’t come in babe, leave it to me’.”
She told Kate Thornton’s White Wine Question Time podcast: “I wanted to take a picture of us.
“Every single couple I know was posting nice romantic pictures. I saw Rochelle and Marvin Humes do it. It looked like a lovely Valentine’s meal.”
The couple, together seven years, are able to laugh about it now.
Denise – who has daughter Betsy, 10, with her ex Lee Mead – got another Frenchie called Remy last November.
The former Big Breakfast host was forced to pull out of this year’s Dancing on Ice after breaking her shoulder and may need further surgery.
LOCKDOWN has been a nightmare... but for singer Paloma Faith it did lead to her dream family.
The star was on the brink of giving up in her bid for a second child after five failed rounds of IVF sapped her both physically and mentally. But things changed when lockdown came – and last month she welcomed her second daughter with partner Leyman Lahcine.
Paloma, 39, says: “I feel like you know for yourself what your boundaries are and I actually knew I’d had enough after three goes. Then lockdown happened and I thought, ‘What else am I going to do?’ I’ll have another go – and then it worked.”
Next thing was to come to terms with the pregnancy and birth itself – after revealing that her first labour was so tough it was as if she had been “to the gates of hell”.
Paloma says: “My last birth was so wild. It’s a bit like when you do your driving test and you don’t want to tell anyone when it is.
“Everything went wrong – she was early, it was a big bloody mess, on many levels. Because the last time we had problems... then because of the traumatic birth I had, I was sort of carved up a bit.”
Juggling
The star’s oldest daughter – who is being raised gender neutral – was born in 2016. A desire for a second child meant several more rounds of IVF.
And after committing to one last try, Paloma turned to work to distract herself from the stress of juggling treatment while looking after an inquisitive four-year-old.
Amazingly, Paloma managed to record her fifth album, Infinite Things, during the first lockdown.
Like any working mum, she had to find pockets of opportunity to create her music – even recording songs in bed while her daughter was sleeping.
She says: “I did quite a lot of it when I went to bed because I wasn’t pregnant then, so I wasn’t tired. I would do ‘day mum’ and put her to sleep and record my album into the night.”
Of her IVF journey, she says:
“It’s a little bit stressful thinking, ‘Will it or won’t it work?’
But I feel really lucky I’ve got the career I’ve got because I’m always busy.
“The most stressful bit is after they put the embryo in you, you have to wait for two weeks before you do a test, and during that time a lot of people take time off work and whatever, pace the floor, and
I just get on with life.” Paloma says she has been lucky with childcare help over the pandemic, as she lives near her mum Pam in East London, where she grew up.
Speaking on the Lockdown Parenting Hell podcast – a week before giving birth to baby No 2 – she jokes: “I’m not really that cool any more, now I put her to bed and waddle to the bed myself and go to sleep for two hours, then I wee, go for another two, then another wee.”
Paloma, famed for hits like Only Love Can Hurt Like This and Can’t Rely On You, has been dating 34-year-old French artist Leyman since 2013.
They met in London after Paloma split from her husband Rian Hayes just eight months after they married.
The singer describes her girls’ daddy as the “love of my life”. And she declares: “Leyman is my husband. You don’t need a marriage certificate.”
Chatting about how her eldest daughter feels about the new arrival, Paloma says she and her four-year-old are like Thelma and Louise, plotting against Daddy.
Expectations
She says: “They say they’re excited but I’m sort of sniggering because I’m like, ‘You don’t know what’s coming!’ I keep trying to manage expectations.
“I’ll say, ‘This baby’s going to cry a lot and they’ll probably get on your nerves’.
“But then I said, ‘We can just leave it with Daddy and run away’.
“And she’s in on it, totally. She whispers
I thought ‘I’ll have another go at IVF’... and then it
worked
in my ear, ‘If we don’t like it, we can run away and leave it with Daddy’. And I’m like, ‘Absolutely... you and me, Thelma and Louise’.”
Paloma also reveals on the podcast that she arranged a present for her daughter from the new arrival, adding: “I’ve bought the present, I thought it was a nice idea.
“But now that I’ve received the boxes I’m not sure how the baby is going to have held those boxes inside my stomach for the full term! I’ll say she only had her credit card in there and she did it online.”
But it’s not all been fun and games for the young family. Paloma has been open about the struggles of parenting two children under the age of five. Writing in her “postpartum diary”, Paloma tells her army of 600,000 Instagram followers that she is struggling with body image issues, saying:
“I look at my body and I feel like it will never be the same again. Having such tearful moments where I can’t cope with anything, even small things.
“Torn between the two kids. The new one is like a new love, I am fascinated and besotted by her and she needs me more than she needs anyone else. Then the first one... [we] miss each other so much we are heartbroken.
“It probably works in her favour I had a C-section because she knows where I will be (usually in bed) and comes to find me and do activity books on the bed together.”
Recalling her first labour, Paloma says her waters ruptured prematurely and, following a nine-hour labour without pain relief, doctors were forced to perform an emergency C-section.
She was left with a womb infection and was unable to walk properly for two months.
But all that pain, and subsequent IVF, led to the ultimate gain and she now is blissfully happy being a family of four.
Announcing her latest arrival, she declares: “It’s worth it to see and meet the new little cherub I have in front of me. This baby couldn’t be more loved or wanted if she tried.”