Louise Redknapp: I almost stepped under bus outside Selfridges after split from Jamie
LOUISE REDKNAPP was so t ormented by her s pl i t f r om husband Jamie that she contemplated ending it all by stepping out in front of a bus.
In a searingly candid interview with today’s You magazine, the former pop star reveals that her distress at walking away from her marriage to the former England footballer was so great that she thought she would be better off dead.
Only the appalling prospect of leaving her sons Charley, now 16, and Beau, now 12, without a mother forced her to brush aside her suicidal thoughts as she stood outside Selfridges, the upmarket department store on Oxford Street, Central London.
Recalling her turmoil, she says: ‘ I would be standing in Central Lo n d o n , wat c h i n g the buses whizz past and I would wonder whether it would be easier for a bus to take me out.
‘All it would take was for me to step out at the wrong moment and it would all be over.’
Asked if suicide was a genuine possibility, she replies: ‘ I think so, for a split second. I was like, “I would really like this all to go away.”
‘But I’ve got two little men I know need me more than anything. That’s where my selfishness stops – when it comes to them.
‘I remember looking at Selfridges and the buses and being like, “God, I’ve got two people that need me, and they’re the loves of my life, so…” They’re the only thing that kept me going. Them and my mum.’
Before tying the knot with Redknapp in 1998, she shot to fame in the mid-1990s as Louise Nurding, a member of the successful girl band Eternal, and was voted sexiest woman of the decade by FHM magazine in 2004.
Her decision to separate from Jamie in 2017 – just months after making the final of Strictly Come Dancing – sent shockwaves through the showbusiness world.
Speaking of her regret at ending her 19- year marriage so hastily after enjoying success on the BBC series, she admits: ‘I didn’t want to lose so much of the good feeling.
‘Before anyone could stop me, I just ran, as fast as the wind would take me. I never once looked behind, until maybe too late.
‘ I should have paused f or a minute and thought about other people and had just a bit more time to work out why I felt I couldn’t do it any more.’
Asked if she could have saved the marriage, the 46-year-old replies: ‘All I know is, I wish I’d tried.
‘I want to say to anybody who is thinking of running, “Just slow down. Don’t run.”
‘Because once you run too fast, you can’t make up the ground you’ve lost. Stop, say what you need, say what you think, don’t be afraid to say what’s really going on. You don’t have to be quiet.’
Looking back, she admits that seeing Mr Redknapp, 47, who is now dating Swedish model Frida Andersson-Lourie, reinvent himself as a TV star on programmes such as Sky’ s A League Of Their Own has been difficult, particularly when she was busy as a mother and housewife at their home in Surrey.
‘Although I was so pleased for him, it was a constant reminder that I wasn’t doing that any more,’ she says. ‘I was the one just putting stuff in the oven, waiting for someone to come home from the job I wished I was doing.
‘ And I think that really does take its toll.’
She says her struggles with selfdoubt, body image, depression and a traumatic incident at the age of seven when a stranger tried to abduct her during a family holiday to Spain helped inspire her new book, You’ve Got This: And Other Things I Wish I Had Known, which is published on March 4.
‘ I want to celebrate what I’ve learnt,’ she says.
‘I also want to say I’ve got a long way to go. I still have really crap days. I still cry really easily, but I’m aware of it.
‘I’ve still got lots to learn. All I can say is, I’m doing my best.’
HOSPITALITY sector chiefs last night insisted they are ready to welcome back customers f or alfresco dining.
Ahead of Boris Johnson’s speech tomorrow setting out a roadmap for reopening, leading restaurateurs, pub owners and chefs said they have spent months preparing to serve customers outdoors.
But while they are demanding to be allowed back in business before Easter, No 10 is set to announce – as revealed in today’s Mail on Sunday – that reopening will be put off until mid- April. The delay is to give enough time for a study into the effect of the return to school on the R number.
Industry body UK Hospitality, which estimates the sector lost £72 billion in revenue last year and more than one million jobs, last
‘It’s like the end of the war… it’s a new start’
week presented the Government with a ten-point plan to re-open the industry from April 1.
Chief executive Kate Nicholls said: ‘There is no valid reason for hospitality to be at the back of the queue as data shows hospitality venues are very low risk due to the exceptional investment that businesses have made in creating safe and Covid-secure environments.’
Model- t urned- publican Jodie Kidd, who runs The Half Moon in Kirdford, West Sussex, has spent months preparing to reopen. She has put up a 22-seater marquee filled with olive trees festooned with lights. She said: ‘We are Covidsafe, we have accommodated all the restrictions, we are good to go.
‘Now we need a date and guidance for when and how we can re-open – we need time to prepare.’
Chef Jack Stein has spent winter deep-cleaning the Cornish Arms in Cornwall’s St Merryn, a pub he owns with his famous father Rick.
‘ We’ve given the pub a lick of paint, we’ve just bought a marquee, we’re doing everything we can to maximise our outdoor space,’ he said. ‘We’re raring to go.’
Des Gunewardena, chief executive of the D&D London group that includes former Conran restaurants Bluebird, Quaglino’s and Le Pont de la Tour, said he is planning a re-opening campaign to give his restaurants’ terraces and rooftop courtyards a new look.
Each will be given the theme of a popular holiday destination – with trees, floral displays, live music, cocktail trolleys and alfresco barbecues – to cheer up customers who cannot travel abroad. ‘It’s like the end of the war – it’s a new start and we will re-open with enthusiasm to look forward. There is a huge demand by customers to get out socialising again,’ he said.
Meanwhile, the owner of a Suffolk-based teepee company said she had seen a spike in interest from pubs and restaurants looking to spruce up outdoor seating.
Jenna Ackerley, of Events Under Canvas, said she normally rents out her 24 teepees to around 180 weddings each year but her income now relies entirely on the hospitality industry.
Pub bosses have been left furious in recent months over the Government’s handling of policies such as the 10pm curfew. Last week, the chief executives of Fuller’ s, Young’s, Greene King and Mitchells & Butlers said they would no longer attend weekly calls with Business Minister Paul Scully. They said the calls had become a ‘tick box exercise’ and they were treated with ‘an obvious lack of interest and respect’.
Patrick Dardis, the chief executive of the Young’s pub chain, urged the Government to open pubs by the Easter weekend ‘to allow families and friends to enjoy the start of spring’. At the very minimum, Mr Dardis said, his group’s 300 pubs should be allowed to open at the end of April with the Rule of Six outdoors and two households allowed to mix indoors. He added outdooronly trading would be ‘impossible to operate’ for his group.
Oakman Inns, which has 28 pubs across the Home Counties, all with large gardens, has already invested around £1.4 million in outside tented spaces and glass dining pods.
Chief executive Dermot King said he would back testing customers on entry to his pubs, and potentially scanning vaccination certificates if it meant restrictions such as the Rule of Six could be scrapped.