.png?width=1200&auto=webp&crop=3%3A2)
Anthea Turner has claimed that The Weakest Link presenter Anne Robinson made her life “hell” by writing “spiteful” columns about her divorce in the 1990s.
Back in 1990, former Blue Peter presenter Turner married her manager, the DJ Peter Powell. The couple divorced eight years later after Turner left her husband for property developer Grant Bovey, who was married with three children.
The events made Turner a tabloid fixture, with the 66-year-old saying in a new interview that Robinson, a columnist at the Daily Express at the time, and the late journalist Lynda Lee-Potter, who wrote for The Daily Mail, subjected her to constant attacks once the affair was revealed.
Asked by The Daily Telegraph what the worst thing written about her had been, Turner said: “The end of my first marriage and meeting Grant caused an eruption. I was television’s golden girl, then I had an affair and was vilified.
“I’d [apparently] taken a happily married man by the scruff of his neck, dragged him out of his home and ruined everybody’s lives.”
Turner continued: “Some very spiteful things were written. Anne Robinson and a journalist called Lynda Lee-Potter made my life hell, without, of course, knowing the full story.”
The Standard has contacted Robinson’s representatives for comment.
Lee-Potter died aged 69 in 2004 after suffering from a brain tumour.
Former Countdown presenter Robinson began her career at the British tabloids in the late 1960s, and went on to write columns for The Sun, The Times and The Telegraph in addition to The Express, where she penned her words about Turner.
Last week, the 81-year-old revealed that she is relocating from the Cotswolds to central London over fears for her health.
Turner and Bovey ended up tying the knot in 1999, and split in 2013 after Bovey had an affair with a much younger woman.
Discussing her second divorce, Turner said that when her marriage to Bovey “went wrong, I did everything I could to fix it”.
“Grant had an affair and I gave him a second chance because I was thinking of the bigger picture – our girls, our home, finances and mutual friends,” she said.
“When we eventually split, my world fell apart but I’m glad that happened in my 50s, not my 60s. The younger you are during divorce, the greater chance you have of righting yourself again. ”
Turner is now engaged to businessman Mark Armstrong, who she said meeting was “one of the biggest rewards” and her “gift from the universe”.
