The Scottish Mail on Sunday

Sheridan Smith, her married TV star lothario... and a very bitter Twitter storm

Hysterical calls to her on-off lover’s wife, bizarre tweets to her Hollyoaks love rival... has Britain’s favourite girl-next-door

- By Sarah Oliver Printed and distribute­d by PressReade­r

IT WOULD be easy to cast this as a kitchen sink drama about a jobbing Northern actor struggling towards showbusine­ss success. Soap opera villain Greg Wood could play himself in the lead role and his on-off girlfriend Sheridan Smith could be his glamorous new love interest.

Smith would doubtless draw an audience of millions. Her role in TV biopic Mrs Biggs earned her a Bafta, and she was also nominated for the coveted award for her portrayal last year of Cilla Black. Meanwhile, her appearance in Funny Girl from November will be one of the great theatre moments of 2015. There’s talk of the musical transferri­ng to the West End, and perhaps even a Broadway run.

Best supporting actress would be a tougher decision, however. For in real life – and that’s what we’re talking about here – the woman who has been Wood’s loyal wife and the family breadwinne­r throughout the lean years is not a theatre luvvie but a primary school teacher.

And while her soon-to-be ex-husband and his celebrity girlfriend have been enjoying themselves on a romantic holiday together, Catherine Milburn remains a bit-part player in a drama that has made her angry and bewildered. It’s one with a contempora­ry plot played out by text, in selfies, and on social media but with an age-old message: wholesome family values rarely survive contact with celebrity.

The storyline features lies and betrayals by Wood, his secret affair with a married Hollyoaks co-star and public dalliances with Smith. It culminates in a bizarre two-day phone, text and Twitter outburst by the actress, suggesting her private life is not on the same smooth upward trajectory as her career.

Indeed the actress’s name is now also being linked to rocker Andy Hopkins, bassist of indie band The Enemy. She is said to have asked him for a date via Twitter, which is how she first flirted with Wood.

For a woman regarded as one of the finest performers of her generation, it’s been an emotionall­y turbulent year.

The same could be said for Catherine, 36, facing the collapse of her 15year relationsh­ip with Wood, by whom she has three children, aged eight, seven and four.

She has never spoken publicly about the celebrity circus her husband has joined.

However, she has confided in friends and one of them has now spoken to The Mail on Sunday.

Catherine, says the friend, is in little doubt that Wood is infatuated – both with Smith and the glamour of his new world. ‘Greg seems to feel his acting potential is yet to be fulfilled and that, as Sheridan’s boyfriend, doors will open, his profile will be raised. He’s bought into the showbiz life and its narcissism,’ the friend said.

It’s not what Catherine expected to happen after her husband hit the big time as villainous Trevor Royle in the Channel 4 soap. The ‘old Greg’, as Catherine describes him to friends, grew up a five-minute journey away from his slim,

‘He thinks that doors will open as her boyfriend’

brunette wife in small-town Cheshire. They became a couple at the age of 20 while he was studying performing arts and she was doing a teaching degree at Salford University, and they tied the knot in March 2005.

The friend said: ‘Catherine was the sensible one, the breadwinne­r. She supported Greg 100 per cent. She encouraged him to do free theatre, to attend castings. She wrote to agents and sent off his show-reel while he was a waiting on tables in a Manchester restaurant for seven years.

‘The problems began when he became a soap star. It got so bad that even if she and Greg had a date night he’d choose a busy bar ahead of a quiet one and then be swept up in a hen party demanding selfies, so she wouldn’t see him all night.’

Catherine has complained there were times when her husband walked ten paces ahead of her as if he didn’t wish for them to be seen together.

‘She said she felt as though she and the children had started to get in the way of the life he wanted, and that was a massive shock because he had always taken his turn with changing nappies, and Brownies.’ The friend

went on: ‘By the end he just wasn’t there physically or emotionall­y and they tried a separation.

‘It was several weeks before Catherine even told the children that Daddy had moved out.

‘They hadn’t noticed because he had been absent so much.’

That absence was because Wood was having an affair with Tamara Wall, who plays gangster Grace Black in Hollyoaks. A year ago, with his marriage crumbling, he moved out of the family home. Catherine hoped their separation might be temporary, she has said.

But one night in November last year she heard Twitter notificati­ons pinging in on an old phone of her husband’s that she was using.

They were from Sheridan Smith – not that Catherine recognised the famous name at that point.

Catherine told her friend: ‘The messages said something like, “You look fit but I see you’re married…” and he replied, “You look fit too…” ‘She said, “No one needs to know.” ‘Then Greg said he had to tell her he’d been seeing Tamara Wall who’d been in Legally Blonde, as had Sheridan. That’s how I found out about their affair because he’d always denied it to me. I didn’t sleep that night. At 7am I called him, called his mum and then tweeted Tamara to thank her for wrecking my marriage.’

Catherine is understood to have filed for divorce later the same day, using screen shots of the Twitter conversati­on.

Wood and Smith then got together and went public with their romance in January this year. In March they had matching tattoos done – Smith’s saying ‘Gregory’s Girl’ and Wood’s saying ‘My Sheri Amour’, each above playing card hearts saying ‘All in’.

But by July it was ‘all out’, according to Smith’s Twitter feed. ‘Just been hurt by an idiot boy again but not gonna lower myself to his standards,’ she told her 647,000 followers.

Then she added a cryptic message to the newly divorced Tamara Wall, saying: ‘Let’s give @tammiew a big shout out coz she’s so honest and lovely.’

Later Sheridan tweeted: ‘The two married people who had affairs and now divorced can get together…’ and said she was going home to her dogs because they, at least, were loyal.

As showbiz speculatio­n about a love split mounted, Catherine – who was on holiday in Spain with her children – sent a text message to Smith and asked her not to criticise Wood publicly, to avoid hurting her family.

The response was a flurry of phone calls from Smith. Catherine finally answered one.

The friend revealed: ‘Sheridan was screaming and crying down the phone, saying, “Don’t get back with him, don’t get back with him…” She seemed to think they were in some kind of four-way relationsh­ip of her, Catherine, Greg and Tamara. ‘It’s weird. The purpose of Sheridan’s call was to tell Catherine not to get back with Greg, yet she is the one person on the planet who wouldn’t. ‘Catherine didn’t know why Sheridan was calling, the kind of things she was saying – criticisin­g Greg, criticisin­g Hollyoaks – they were the kind of things you’d say to your best friend or maybe vent in a group chat on Facebook. It was like she had no one else to talk to. It made Catherine feel sorry for Greg because this is obviously what he has to put up with.’

Over the hours that followed, the women exchanged a string of comforting texts, both believing they had been cheated on by Wood.

But it appears Wood and Smith patched up their relationsh­ip because she then severed contact with Catherine.

Since then, Smith and Wood have not been pictured in public together but Catherine has told her friend that she is certain they are reunited to the extent of enjoying a holiday together.

Just a few weeks ago, she vetoed a request from her husband to take Sheridan to a family barbecue to meet their children. She confided: ‘When he settles down with someone, that will be the moment to involve the kids, but I don’t think it’s going to be with Sheridan.’

Catherine is shocked by his choices, telling her friend: ‘I am the one who helped get him where he is and we had a good life while I was doing it.

‘I never lost my figure or started to shuffle about in slippers. I’m a good mum, I keep a tidy house, we had a great social life and nice holidays. It’s such a shame he’s thrown all that shared history away because no matter who he ends up with, you can’t get that back.’

The friend added: ‘Catherine told me that Greg wants attention, he wants people to adore him and now he’s going out with Sheridan he’s basking in her starlight. He’s spellbound by her.

‘As for Sheridan, what sane person would want to get together with a man whose wife is divorcing him for having an affair with his co-star. I can’t imagine why she is with him.’

Catherine’s circle of supporters is aghast that Wood’s divorce solicitors are chasing her to return to work early in 2016 to ease the family finances just as she is transition­ing to single parenthood.

Catherine herself, however, appears to have reserved her greatest vitriol for her husband’s onscreen Hollyoaks lover. Tamara Wall is a blonde with whom he enjoyed real-life trysts for a year behind his wife’s back before moving on – and up – to Smith.

Catherine told her friend: ‘Tamara is the home-wrecker. Sheridan may have made a bad decision but that doesn’t make her a bad person.

‘Much as I wish her well with Greg, I don’t think they’re going to make it. She clearly has trust issues and she’s with someone who is a liar and a cheat.

‘The sad thing is that Greg didn’t used to be this way – he’s like a different human being now. I miss the old Greg but I’m not sure he exists any more.’

It’s clear there are several more unwritten acts to be played out before this real-life drama is over. What will be fascinatin­g will be to see if Wood appears on the red carpet to support Smith when she opens in Funny Girl at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London later this year.

It’s a role that could launch her into the stratosphe­re, since it’s the one which made a Broadway star of Barbra Streisand.

She’s playing the lead, of course, Fanny Brice. It’s a semi-autobiogra­phical tale which tells the story of a comedienne who, despite her profession­al success, finds herself alone after breaking up with a spectacula­rly unreliable chap.

She’ll just have to hope life doesn’t, on this particular occasion, imitate art.

‘They’ve had matching tattoos done’

‘Sheridan is with someone who’s a cheat’

 ??  ??
 ??  ?? TOGETHER: Greg Wood with Smith on the day they had their tattoos
TOGETHER: Greg Wood with Smith on the day they had their tattoos
 ??  ?? CO-STARS AND LOVERS: Wood with Tamara Wall in Hollyoaks
CO-STARS AND LOVERS: Wood with Tamara Wall in Hollyoaks
 ??  ?? SEEKING DIVORCE: Wood’s estranged wife Catherine
SEEKING DIVORCE: Wood’s estranged wife Catherine

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