Bragg, 76, leaves his wife after four decades
As Melvyn Bragg rekindles an old affair, one woman explains why she too returned to an ex
MELVYN BRAGG has split with his wife of 43 years to move in with a woman he had an affair with more than 20 years ago, it was reported.
The broadcaster, 76, is understood to be living with former film assistant Gabriel Clare-Hunt, 60, after breaking up with author Cate Haste.
Lord Bragg and his second wife, who have two grown-up children together – filmmaker Alice, 38, and science journalist Tom, 36 – lived together in north London. He is said to have had an affair with Ms Clare-Hunt in 1995 when he was arts controller at London Weekend Television and she was a secretary. At the time, he was said to be “besotted” with her. He was also reported to have had an eight-year affair with Lady Jane Wellesley, the Prince of Wales’s former girlfriend and the daughter of the 8th Duke of Wellington.
Lord Bragg, who presented ITV’s flagship arts programme The South Bank Show for more than 30 years, told the Daily Mail yesterday: “Cate and I have agreed to an amicable separation after many years of marriage. We will be making no further comments.”
The broadcaster also has a daughter, Marie-Elsa, 50, who is a Church of England priest, from his first marriage to Marie-Elisabeth Roche, who committed suicide in 1971.
The broadcaster Melvyn Bragg has reportedly left his wife of 43 years to move in with a woman he had an affair with more than 20 years ago. Alex Portman, 44, was 25 when she had an affair that nearly destroyed her marriage – then, 14 years later, she fell for him all over again.
In the ordinary routine of domestic life, it’s hard to believe how much drama my relationship with Jamie has caused. My passion for another man destroyed my marriage and caused severe unhappiness for five people – including my young children.
I was 24 when I married Stephen. We met at university, and were one of those couples who just drift into adult life together – looking back, we were both shy and found mutual support in being a couple. Our friends used to laugh about how cosy we were, while they were ricocheting through heartbreaking affairs. I didn’t want any of that. My parents had divorced when I was 11, and I craved stability. Stephen was kind, steady and faithful – I knew he adored me. He proposed in Paris on my 24th birthday, and we married six months later.
I was working in TV, in a demanding junior role. Stephen had joined the graduate scheme of a big travel company, and his hours were traditional. He struggled to understand my long days or the culture of going for drinks after filming wrapped. But we still talked and laughed together, and we had started to think about having children. I wasn’t looking for anyone else, but it’s when you get complacent that you’re in the most danger. I started working on a new TV drama series. I was learning a huge amount, and was getting on very well with the assistant producer, Jamie, a darkhaired, blue-eyed 30-year-old. Unlike Stephen, he was the opposite of steady. He had no savings, he lived in a shared house with a performance poet and a chef, and he rode a motorbike. He was also hilariously funny. Some of the series was filmed on location, and the crew stayed in a hotel in Wiltshire for a few nights. In the evenings, a few of us would sit in the bar, but on the fourth night it was just me and Jamie.
I felt a frisson that I’d never felt with Stephen – I wanted to impress him, I wanted this man to notice me. As we talked and laughed, it was clear I wasn’t inventing the spark between us. Nothing had happened, but I knew it could, and I felt unhinged with desire. My relationship with Stephen seemed to exist on a separate planet. It never occurred to me, bizarrely, that I could do anything to harm it.
All the next day, I longed to be near Jamie. I was like a 14-year-old
‘I felt unhinged with desire. I’d never had this frisson with my husband’
in love with the football captain. That evening, when he leaned in and said, “Do you fancy dinner somewhere?” I didn’t think twice. We went to a picturesque candlelit country pub, and by the end of dinner we were holding hands.
My heart was racing so hard I thought I might collapse. Even then, I was telling myself it was just a flirtation, that I was “getting it out of my system”. I was only 25, and I’d had two lovers in my entire life. That night made it three. The sex was utterly different from the loving, intimate times Stephen and I shared – it was pure passion. Stephen didn’t suspect, and I was too besotted to feel guilty.
A few nights later, Jamie told me he was in love with me. I answered, truthfully, that I didn’t know what to do, but I wanted to keep on seeing him. The late nights and weekends working away meant it was easy to keep things secret. We never texted, we arranged everything in person – evenings in hotels, or at his odd, Bohemian house, lunchtimes spent frantically kissing. I didn’t know how it would end, I just wanted the madness to go on.
But of course, it didn’t, for the most serious of reasons – I discovered I was pregnant. Jamie and I had been obsessively careful. But I’d come off the Pill, and Stephen and I hadn’t been using anything, on the basis that it might take a while to get pregnant. The stupid, romantic part of me was crushed that I wasn’t carrying Jamie’s child, which would have solved the dilemma for me, but I knew Stephen was far better equipped for fatherhood.
I had to tell Jamie it was over. He was devastated, and left the production, citing family reasons, and cut off all contact. He did the right thing, but I ached with misery. I passed it off to Stephen as pregnancy blues – he was very supportive and thrilled about the baby.
After Adam was born, I suffered post-natal depression. When he was three months old, I cracked. I’d been crying all day, and when Stephen begged me to tell him what was wrong, I told him everything.
He was shocked and understandably deeply hurt, but couldn’t bear to leave us. In the end, I promised I’d stick with him – he was a wonderful dad. Stephen told himself I’d needed a fling, because we were so young when we met; and over time, he gradually forgave me.
We had another baby, Lyla, and I tried to put Jamie out of my mind. I did dream about him sometimes, and when Stephen and I argued, I thought about what could have been, but I reminded myself that I couldn’t risk our family.
I went back to work part time, and Stephen was promoted. I sometimes heard news about Jamie on the grapevine – he was successful, wasn’t married – but we hadn’t seen each other in 14 years when I was booked to work on a new TV adaptation, and I saw his name on the crew list. The first day on set, I realised my feelings hadn’t changed. He was older, greyer, but still made my heart pound. He asked me for a drink, “to catch up”, and the attraction was like a wrecking ball. A week after starting the job, we kissed, and he said, “I can’t lose you again”.
I asked myself how I could risk my marriage, our family, the life we had together for a rekindled fling. But I did. Jamie and I resumed our affair, I agonised about the children, sobbed over Stephen, went round in endless circles – but it all came back to one fact. I loved Jamie, I always had, and I couldn’t bear to live without him.
Telling Stephen was hell. He begged me to stay. Our children were 13 and 10, and I was horribly aware of the echoes of my own childhood. I tried to shield them from the worst pain, but nothing could change the fact that Stephen moved out and our marriage was over. I waited a year until I allowed Jamie to enter their lives. He did his best, but he wasn’t their father, and Stephen, understandably, didn’t make it easy.
In one of the many, agonising conversations we had afterwards, Stephen told me he always suspected I’d never got over my affair, but he didn’t want to know the truth. He felt I’d constantly yearned for him since Adam was born, and I suppose he was right.
Four years on, Jamie and I are married and Stephen is seeing someone new. I am not proud of how I behaved, or the pain I caused – how could I be? All I know is that meeting my ex-lover again at 40 made it very clear that he is my soul mate. Despite the difficulties, we are truly happy together. I just wish I’d met him earlier, and avoided so much pain and sorrow for everyone involved.
‘Stephen told himself I’d needed a fling, because we were so young when we met’