British TV legend Fern Britton has spoken with heartbreaking honesty about the “dark place” she found herself in after enduring the loss of both her parents and the collapse of her marriage within just three years.
The beloved former This Morning host – now living quietly by the Cornish coast – has been candid about how grief and loneliness nearly consumed her. “My mum died, and a year later my father died, and the next year my marriage died,” Fern revealed during an emotional talk at the Cheltenham Literary Festival in 2024. “I fell into this era of indolence, where I just stayed in bed later and later.”
Struggling to cope, Fern confessed she picked up unhealthy habits, including smoking and heavy drinking, as her mental health spiralled. “Why don’t I start smoking? Yes. Drinking. Yes, eating, yes… And then it took me about a year to realise I had put a lot of weight on and wasn’t breathing well,” she admitted.
But despite being “in a very bad place”, Fern slowly found the strength to rebuild her life. “Gradually, I managed to pull myself out of it,” she said.
Speaking again in 2025, Fern reflected on the painful series of events that shaped her recent years. “My mum died in 2018 and my dad in 2019. Then my marriage died. Next, I discovered my phone had been hacked for 15 years, and a man who had been stalking me finally went to court. For a while, I wondered what else could possibly happen. But lots of women endure difficult stuff – we just live with it and keep going.”
