My marriage died, it was tough but my friends cheered me up with saucy jokes, says Fern Britton
HER split from celebrity chef Phil Vickery after 20 years of marriage stunned the TV world.
And after finally coming to terms with the most difficult period of her life, telly fave Fern Britton has opened up about her agony.
She has now spoken candidly about the “tough time” — which also saw her lose both parents alongside a family pet in three years of hell.
Her actor dad Tony Britton, whose string of TV and film credits include Eighties BBC sitcom Don’t Wait Up, died age 95 in 2019. That same year, Fern’s 94-year-old mum Ruth also passed away.
As well as enduring the loss of her parents, Fern insists she and Phil have now come to terms with their separation, saying: “It’s been hard, but there is life again.”
Fern, 63, said: “We did have three cats. I lost one of them two summers ago.
“I have had a bad two or three years. Both of my parents died, my beloved cat died and unfortunately my marriage died.
“It was a bit of a tough time but we are getting through. And it is all OK. There is life afterwards.”
Fern and Phil, who share 19-year-old daughter Winnie together, announced they had split in January 2020.
They married in 2000 — months after moving on from their exes.
That year she had divorced her first husband Clive Jones — father of her twins Harry and Jack, 27, and daughter Grace, 24 — while Phil and girlfriend Sarah Ann Lock had gone their separate ways the year before.
They had met on This Morning when she hosted alongside Phillip Schofield.
In a statement released on Twitter, she said: “After more than 20 happy years together, Phil and I have decided to go our separate ways. We will always share a great friendship and our lovely children.”
In a new chat with BBC presenter Carol Kirkwood, 59, for online platform Fane.co.uk to promote Fern’s latest book Daughters Of Cornwall, the TV host told how one of her pals cheered her up with a saucy joke as she unpacked her things from their marital home in her new place.
‘I’M A BIG SWEARER’
She said: “I have got a couple of very good girlfriends down here in Cornwall and they just make me laugh all the time.
“They came round a while ago to help me clear my garage. Now that’s a friend, isn’t it?
“There was an awful lot that had arrived from my old home and I could not face unpacking it all.
“They came and helped me and they brought boxes and big thick pens and labels.
“We spent all day and their partners were lovely and put up shelves for me, and a floor.
“Then at the end of the day, one of the boxes had a label on, saying, ‘Sex toys to be sorted,’ rubbed out and, ‘Outdoor lights,’ put on it, just to make me laugh.”
Phil seems to have moved on with Yorkshire Dales sheep farmer Alison O’Neill, who he exchanged a string of messages with months after the breakdown of his marriage
Fern, though, recently insisted she is “not looking for anybody else” and is happy for her cats and dog to keep her company.
She said: “One of my cats, Bob, you feel something in the night, then you get a paw and a few claws and then he whispers in your ear, ‘I don’t know if you are aware of it but it’s almost 4am and I am hungry’.
“And it is every morning and that is Bob. So I have Bob and Brandy and she is an absolute b***h.
“She really is. She comes in, bashing away.
“We have a little doggy as well and he has become my grandson. They are all very sweet.” In the midst of a difficult period in her life, Fern has, like the rest of the country, had to face months on her own in lockdown.
Once a size 22 — until she underwent a gastric band operation in 2008 and shrunk by five sizes — Fern admitted she has put some weight on again.
The ex-Ready Steady Cook presenter also admitted to feeling lost ahead of her birthday this week.
She said: “These times are very different. I am fine that it is my birthday on Saturday and I will be 64.
“I just think, ‘Where has that gone?’ And I am not at a crossroads, but I am stepping into another big chapter of life whilst possibly the final chapter, so I am processing all of that as well as Covid and all the other changes that have been going on.
“Not in a down way, it is just like, ‘Oh I don’t know what is quite happening next’.
“I suppose that is true for a lot of us. That approaching age is quite something.
SEX & SWEARING
“I have put weight on in lockdown and it’s life. I keep thinking there is no point in lying. It’s a good thing to say to people, ‘This is what happens when you get older’.”
Fern enjoys discussing sex and swearing — even if it does embarrass her two daughters.
But the author says she is now cutting both from her books having previously written raunchy scenes and foul-mouthed language. She said: “I have put swear words in my books. I like swearing in real life.
“I am a big swearer and I have taught the children how to swear. It makes me laugh.
“I have taught the children how to say the worst words but in humour and in context and with whom you are with.
“You may as well know they are good words and have a function in everyday life. Some of my characters in my books did swear often but I had one lady who said to me, ‘It has spoiled it for me’.
“I thought, ‘We all love EastEnders and Coronation Street and the writers there convey people’s fury, frustration without using those words’. So I thought that is something I am challenging myself. So there is a little bit but no more of the serious words. It is the same with sex scenes with my children reading it as they are like, ‘Mother, how do you know what happens?’
“In real life sex happens. They (sex scenes) are always a bit funny, like falling on to the sofa with your knickers around your ankles, but not full-on Jackie Collins or Jilly Cooper who did it the best of all.
“In Daughters Of Cornwall, I did have one scene which I read to my daughter and she went, ‘Oh mother’.
“This man was seducing a woman and he placed the mirror at the right angle and said, ‘We can watch each other’. That for my daughter was horrific.
“I think I can hand over that genre to people who do it well but in my experience a lot of sex is actually quite funny and amusing.”
Recalling a previous liaison with a man, she shyly recalled: “Did he play me like a violin? No.
‘SPAT OUT’
“Maybe I am too old and cynical but that is not the way I recall it.”
One thing she is not cutting out from her life is confrontation.
In 2018 she had an awkward moment with her former on-screen partner Phillip Schofield, 59, when she claimed she was snubbed from This Morning’s 20th anniversary party.
During a chat over video link, Fern told the ITV show: “I would have loved to have been there, but I didn’t get an invitation.”
And she criticised another show she had been in — Strictly Come Dancing.
Fern told how, after taking part in the BBC’s dance competition in 2012 with pro partner Artem Chigvintsev, she toured with fellow celebrities but found the professionals hostile towards her, saying she felt like being in a “sausage machine” and then “spat out”.
Fern said: “I was lucky enough to go on the tour, which I loved. The TV show was frantic and it was rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.
“I was in a bubble and you are unable to take on board the reality of the situation you are in.
“The tour is amazing. How often does a 55-year-old woman get to dance the Viennese waltz at the O2 in front of 20,000 people, in a fabulous dress with a handsome man? Afterwards you pile into enormous coaches.
The band and the stage management were my friends as I have been a stage manager.
That is what I am trained in so I fell in with all of them.
“The band said, ‘How long is it going to be before you come on our bus and get off the twirlies’ bus?’
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“I did get on to the band bus within three days as the twirlies, wonderful though they are, I did not feel comfortable and they were fine about it.
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“They could not give a monkey’s whether you were there or not. But on the band’s bus they always had cheeses and beautiful bottles of wine and ham.
“Once you are in the sausage machine you are there until you are spat out the other end.”