The Only Way is Essex star Megan McKenna has revealed she left the UK after her house was broken into by machete-wielding burglars.
The reality TV star, 33, relocated to Germany, where her footballer husband Oliver Burke, 29, lives, after the incident left her terrified to live in England by herself.
McKenna opened up about the incident while appearing on the upcoming episode of Jamie Laing’s Great Company podcast.
She told the former Made in Chelsea star: “I don’t talk about this with a lot of people because I was worried and scared at the time because people were in prison for it, and when there was a trial going on, so I wasn’t able to talk about it.
“I was robbed really badly in my own home. It scared me so much to be in the UK and to live in the UK on my own, because obviously Ollie’s in Germany.”
McKenna revealed that the terrifying incident happened shortly after the couple’s honeymoon in Montenegro, the pair having tied the knot in June 2025.
Scottish footballer Burke had to travel back to Germany, where he plays for Union Berlin, the day after they landed in the UK, leaving McKenna alone in their Essex home.
The TV personality explained that she fell asleep around 11pm, then woke to find the house “shaking”. “I was such a disorientated mess. I was like, ‘What?’ And then I just knew that it was happening to me, and I was like, ‘Oh my God,’” she said.
“I get goose pimples now thinking about it. They were inside my house, but I lock my bedroom door every night because I always worry about something happening to me when I’m on my own.
“The next thing I know, my mirror has come off my wall, and they’re hacking a hole through my wall with a baseball bat.
“They’re three masked men with machetes and baseball bats, and they managed to hack a hole in my wall because it was a fake wall going onto my dressing room, linked to my bedroom.”
Terrified the intruders would kill her dog, mother-of-one McKenna phoned the police, who “were in my house for seven minutes”.
“It was the longest seven minutes I’ve ever experienced in my entire life, and the police were saying to me, ‘Don’t speak to them,’” she recalled. “I said, ‘I can hear they’ve got weapons. They’re hacking my wall down,’ and they were like, ‘We’re on our way.’
“And I was like, ‘No, they’re hacking my wall down.’ And they were like, ‘Please don’t talk to them.’ I said, ‘If I don’t go and talk to them and ask them what they want, they’re going to come in and kill my dog.’”
McKenna approached one of the men, who was wearing a Balaclava, who took her jewellery and then left with the others.
Explaining that she’d felt “obviously targeted” for her jewellery, McKenna said that the incident left her feeling “not safe in my own home” and that the experience “changes you forever”.
