Anthea Turner has opened up about the devastating fallout she faced after leaving her first husband for married property developer Grant Bovey — admitting she felt “cancelled before we even had the word.”
The beloved TV presenter, now 65, confessed she genuinely believed her career was finished after the explosive affair scandal turned her into one of Britain’s most controversial celebrity figures in the late 1990s.
At the time, Anthea had been married to Radio 1 DJ Peter Powell for eight years before leaving him in 1998 for his friend, businessman Grant Bovey — who also walked away from his own marriage and three young daughters to be with her.
The scandal quickly exploded across the tabloids, with Anthea branded a “homewrecker” as public opinion turned against her almost overnight.
Looking back during a candid new interview, Anthea admitted the backlash was brutal and left her feeling completely shut out by the television industry.
“I was ‘cancelled’ before we even had the word,” she said. “When I went through a difficult time, yes, I was absolutely pushed aside — over, done, I couldn’t get arrested.”
She explained that when the scandal finally died down and she slowly tried to rebuild her life, television itself had completely changed around her.
“If you weren’t a gardener, a cook, an interior designer or an expert on history or wildlife, you were stuffed,” she recalled. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh my goodness me, that’s probably me done.’”
Despite the controversy, Anthea and Grant stayed together for 15 years and married in a lavish 2000 ceremony that later became infamous across Britain after the pair posed with Cadbury’s Flake bars in a £450,000 promotional deal — a moment forever remembered as “Flake Gate.”
But the marriage eventually collapsed in 2012 after Anthea discovered Grant had been having an affair with interior designer Zoe de Mallet Morgan, who was just 24 years old at the time and 26 years younger than him.
Although the couple briefly reconciled, they split for good in 2013 and officially divorced two years later.
Surprisingly, Anthea now says she has no regrets about the relationship — insisting the marriage ultimately helped her rediscover herself.
“After my divorce I met myself again,” she explained. “The me I am now in my sixties is much closer to the one I was in my thirties, only now I have the golden ticket of experience.”
She added that although she fought hard to save the marriage, ending it eventually gave her emotional and professional freedom.
“I did everything I could to keep my marriage to Grant together, but had I stayed in it I wouldn’t be the woman I am now.”
The former Blue Peter star also insisted there is “absolutely no bitterness” between herself and either of her ex-husbands.
“There’s absolutely no bitterness. Grant and I had some great years, Peter and I had some great years,” she said.
Anthea also reflected on the moment she publicly admitted the affair all those years ago, saying she chose honesty because she knew the truth would eventually emerge anyway.
“I owned up to it, because when people split up and say, ‘There’s nobody else involved,’ you know damn well there is,” she previously admitted.
Even more remarkably, Anthea revealed she still has an incredibly close relationship with Grant’s daughters — Amelia, Lily and Claudia — despite the painful divorce.
“They’ve been in my life since they were two, five, and six,” she explained. “When their father and I split up, I thought, ‘Oh gosh…’ because you just don’t know what will happen.”
“But with the girls and me, nothing changed.”
In fact, Anthea revealed one of the daughters even lived with her for a period after the split, describing their bond as “wonderful.”
Now, years after one of the biggest public scandals of her life, Anthea says she has finally found happiness again with millionaire businessman Mark Armstrong.
The couple became engaged during a romantic trip to Italy in 2019 and are reportedly planning a much smaller wedding after Anthea admitted her infamous first ceremony became “too extravagant” and “nowhere near what I wanted.”
Reflecting on the notorious “Flake Gate” wedding disaster, she joked: “A chocolate bar was stuffed in my face, and then that was the end of everything.”
