‘I tried everything to have children’
ANTHEA’S HEARTACHE
She had one of the biggest S falls from grace in showbiz having been the golden girl of TV in the ’90s presenting on Blue Peter and GMTV. Then it all came crashing down when her affair with married father-of-three Grant Bovey was exposed and her career was thrown into freefall.
Now, 20 years on, Anthea Turner, 57, has revealed how much this affected her on Channel 5 show In Therapy.
She said: “I worked hard at my craft, so then to be belittled because of your personal life, to have that taken away, was hard. I actually took it really seriously. I got absolutely vilified. You’d think I’d murdered somebody by some of the vile things said.”
While Anthea fell out of favour, she was with Grant for 13 years, before her marriage collapsed following his affair with 28-yearold Zoe de Mallet Morgan.
However, Anthea, who was once the UK’S second highest paid TV presenter, is still close to his three daughters, and her stepdaughter Claudia Bovey, 18, lives with her.
Sadly, Anthea was never able to have children of her own naturally and admits that’s still incredibly painful for her.
She revealed: “I did everything to try to have children, including a lot of IVF. I desperately wanted kids and for three years I tried every which way. And then you get to this point where you realise that you’ve just got to stop.”
Anthea’s pain goes back to her childhood when her younger sister Ruth – who had spina bifida – passed away when she was just 15, with the TV host about to turn 18 at the time. Growing up in a close-knit family in the Midlands, she didn’t fully grieve for Ruth.
She said: “Mum and dad made a decision that my other sister Wendy and I weren’t to go to the funeral. I did what a lot of kids do, they can’t deal with it so you sort of run away from it. My job was to look after Wendy and just go to school – it was all very stressful. I’ve done everything I can to look after my parents. They’ve been scarred by events in their life.”
But despite all her heartache, Anthea – who is currently single – wants to heal her emotional wounds and is looking forward to the future.
“I feel like I’m starting again,” she added. “I do feel optimistic, there’s still fear there but it’s a fear with optimism. I’ve always had this little thing, it’s deep inside me somewhere – I will be all right.”
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