Golden girl whose fortunes crashed

IN her prime, Anthea Turner was paid £1million a year as the co-presenter of breakfast show GMTV with Eamonn Holmes on ITV.

At the same time she was also working for rival channel BBC1, hosting The National Lottery Live from 1994 to 1996.

Once the second-highest paid woman on TV behind Cilla Black, she also enjoyed a jet-set lifestyle as the presenter of ITV’s travel programme Wish You Were Here...?

But Miss Turner found new levels of wealth after marrying property tycoon Grant Bovey, who built a £100million buy-to-let firm with Miss Turner by his side and then saw it collapse in the credit crunch. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the one-time golden girl of daytime television was reduced to scrubbing floors in TV commercials as the face of Flash cleaning products.

In 2009, shortly before Mr Bovey was declared bankrupt, Miss Turner told the Daily Mail: ‘I still have designer clothes, but these days you’re more likely to find me in Matalan, River Island, New Look – even Primark.

‘We’re not super-rich people who can weather this storm without noticing. We’re ordinary Middle England and, like a lot of those people, we’ve taken a hit.’