Beverley Turner is behaving as though she has discovered an entire new species. Maybe she has. Incredulously, the TV presenter says: ‘I mean, this is a man who tidies hotel rooms! He makes the bed and folds the towels and puts things in the bin and leaves it all neat for the cleaners.
‘The first time he did it – when we were having some hotel shenanigans, during the period when we were trying to keep our relationship quite distant from the children – I was stunned. I didn’t know such men existed. It was very attractive, but not normal.’
She turns to the man sitting beside her on the sofa. He looks very young – he’s 36, to her 50 – very attentive and, dare we say it, very neat.
‘When we were first falling in love, I realised he was reading my mind in terms of what I needed.’ she says. ‘Not in the bedroom — although he was good at that, too — but in general. He’d say, ‘I bought some washing powder because I noticed we needed it’. I remember saying to him, ‘who are you and who do you work for? MI5?’.’
Glory be for younger, kinder men who suddenly appear in the lives of middle-aged divorcees such as Beverley Turner and make them rethink everything they ever thought about relationships.
Beverley Turner says being with her younger man James Pritchett – he’s 36, to her 50 – makes her feel like she’s won the lottery
‘There was obvious chemistry,’ says Beverley. ‘But I was a middle-aged woman with three kids. I never thought for a minute this man would come into my life, and transform it’
‘I feel I’ve won the Lottery!’ says Bev, who separated from her Olympic rower husband James Cracknell in 2019 after 17 years and three children together. ‘I like to think that I had such a hard time for the last eight years of my marriage that the love gods looked down on me, thought ‘let’s give her a break’, and delivered me the perfect man.’
Finally, the perfect man speaks. Admittedly, it’s not easy, as Bev says herself, because she’s a bit of a ‘rent-a-gob’, a TV personality never short of an opinion or six.
But James Pritchett, the toyboy who came into her life after her marriage ended, puts his hand on her knee, which is her signal to be quiet for a minute. This is his first interview since they got together in 2019.
‘I don’t mean to blow my own trumpet, but I think I can read Bev quite well,’ he says. ‘I know what she needs. I see my role as just being here to make things easier for her. If, for instance, she needs to concentrate on work, I’ll say to the kids ‘don’t disturb your mum, come to me’.’
Bev says: ‘I spent such a long time being responsible for everything and everyone. I couldn’t believe it was possible in life to be a passenger, not the driver.
‘James takes all the hassles off my plate. He gives me mind-space so I can work. He makes decisions – even small ones like what is for tea as well as where we might go on holiday. It’s very nice not to be in charge. I recommend it.’
There is nothing quite like the bracing honesty of a woman who has had the bottom fall out of her life, but has discovered she can rebuild.
James came into her life when the newly-separated Bev was reeling a bit and looking for advice on replanning her home. A friend introduced her to James, who works for an eco housing company.
‘I was expecting a hairy-a***d builder, but there was this hot young man at my door’, she says. ‘I thought ‘oh, hello!’
‘There was obvious chemistry, but I was a middle-aged woman with three kids. I never thought for a minute this man would come into my life, and transform it.’ The truth was that Bev’s life, outwardly so glossy, needed transforming.
James, a hot former public schoolboy, didn’t know who Beverley was until he subsequently Googled her name
At first, James was described to Bev’s children as ‘Mummy’s friend’. She says: ‘Now, I’ve never felt happier, or sexier’
She first came to public attention in the late-90s, presenting sports programmes such as ITV’s Formula 1 coverage, but soon became more famous as Mrs James Cracknell.
Her marriage to the double Olympic gold medallist oarsman, which produced three children (Croyde, now 20, Kiki, 14, and Trixie, 12), was exhausting and exhilarating in equal measure.
She has always been honest about the pressures involved in being married to a national hero. ‘I loved JC [Cracknell] and I thought we would be together for ever. But anyone who is married to an elite athlete will tell you that it is not an easy place to be because their life is always more important than yours. My husband worked hard and gave us a good quality of life, but I wanted to provide a good quality of life, too.’
Maybe there were fault lines already, but in 2010, while expecting their third child, Cracknell suffered a devastating head injury in an accident while cycling across America for a TV programme.
Although Bev nursed him back to health, there were permanent personality changes. The effect on their marriage was cataclysmic. ‘For the first three or four years, it was as if I had four children,’ she admits, candidly. ‘I feel as if my husband died in 2010. What I was dealing with was a bereavement.’
Despite persevering for eight years, the marriage never recovered. Then Cracknell — a man who was constantly looking for the next challenge, such as rowing across the Atlantic or trekking to the South Pole — declared that he wanted to go to study human evolution at Cambridge University.
Leaving her to man the barricades at home, again, was the final straw for Bev. ‘I knew it was over then.’ At Cambridge, Cracknell met Jordan Connell, the woman who would become his next wife.
All this was played out in public, which must have been excruciating. What sort of place was Bev in, mentally? ‘Those eight years, after the accident, had been just about lurching from day to day, trying to keep the ship afloat. Then, suddenly, I was single, with three kids and a house that was falling apart. I was lonely. I was craving emotional intimacy, which I hadn’t had for a long long time. I was empty.’
Enter James Pritchett, a hot former public schoolboy. He didn’t know who Bev Turner was until he subsequently Googled her name.She says: ‘We worked out later that when I was first on the telly, in the early 2000s, he would have been doing his GCSEs.’
Was James put off about the idea of getting involved with a high profile divorcee-to-be who was pretty vocal about how hellish her life had become (Bev once admitted that she would like to hire an assassin to take out her ex-husband)? ‘Well, it wasn’t like that. At first, we just chatted. I mean, I probably offloaded way too much, but James is the best listener on the planet.’
She expected the age difference to matter. ‘But to my surprise, it didn’t. It helped that James is an old head on young shoulders.’
When did things progress to romance? ‘The thing about James is that he is great at DIY and he fixed a few things around the house,’ she says. ‘And then one day the shower door fell off and I thought, ‘I know. I’ll call James’.’
James leans over and quips: ‘She did get dressed first!’
Bev retorts: ‘Oh yes. I wasn’t naked. Oh gosh, this sounds like a bad porn film!’
Over time, James helped fix more things around the house. ‘He loves a restoration project,’ she says, ‘but the restoration project turned out being me. He fixed me.’
At first, James was described to Bev’s children as ‘Mummy’s friend’. She says: ‘Now, I’ve never felt happier, or sexier. Of course, you worry about that. For 20 years, I had never had sex with another man, other than my husband.
‘You think, ‘I’m older. Can I?’, but actually it all happened quite naturally. There was that emotional connection first and I need that. Some women don’t, but I do. We talked about it, laughed about it. It was fun. I’d forgotten what fun was.’
Her children were getting used to James being around more and more. He says he asked her oldest son how he would feel about him taking his mum on a date. ‘I got his blessing.’
Bev separated from her Olympic rower husband James Cracknell in 2019 after 17 years
The presenter with Cracknell and two of their three children at a premiere in 2016. ‘I thought we would be together for ever,’ she said
James also met Cracknell. ‘It was fine,’ James says. ‘We shook hands, and had a cup of tea. I mean, we are all grown-ups.’
It all sounds very happy-families, but the couple are honest about how their extended clans thought they had taken leave of their senses.
‘My mum wasn’t impressed,’ laughs Bev. ‘She said: ‘What would a handsome young man want with my daughter and her nightmare children’. She said – to James’s face – ‘well, I feel sorry for you. Don’t you want to have children of your own?’
Also, Bev’s father initially thought James was a gold-digger.
James recalls: ‘The first time I met him, I shook his hand and said what a lovely house Bev had, and he said: ‘You’re not having it!’
James won them over. Bev explains: ‘I said to my mum before she met James that she would love him, because he makes me calm. She said: ‘Nonsense. No one makes you calm’, but now she agrees he does.’ With regard to James sacrificing his chance of becoming a father himself, Bev says the issue was initially ‘the elephant in the room.’
She says: ‘We discussed it. I actually wondered if I could have a baby for him? Should we think about this? I was in my late-forties, but I think my fertility would have been OK. Then lockdown came along and six months of home-schooling put paid to that.’
James nods. ‘We decided three children was enough.’
It’s striking that they talk about ‘our’ children. Bev says her trio refer to James as their ‘step-dad’. It is clear James is very hands-on.
I ask if it’s safe to assume that James – unlike Cracknell – won’t come home one day and announce he’s off to row the Atlantic.
‘I wouldn’t announce anything,’ he says. ‘I would discuss.’
The two families have worked out co-parenting. Bev says of Cracknell: ‘He’s my children’s dad, and they see him when they can, when his diary allows it and when theirs does.’
Although Bev’s main house is in Chiswick, west London, the couple also own a home in Oxfordshire, where James, who has a business in the county, stays for two or three nights a week. Bev clarifies that he is not a full-time house-husband, ‘though all this is making him sound like one’.
What is obvious is that having James around has allowed Bev to build the career that she always craved. Though she was a regular on programmes such as Jeremy Vine’s show and This Morning, her career took a hit when she expressed anti-vaccine mandate views during the Covid pandemic.
‘My career was on an up. I was on lots of shows, appearing as myself rather than James Cracknell’s wife,’ she says.
‘People seemed to like the fact that I was expressing views that were a bit different. Then those sorts of views became very unpopular. We were in the grip of a mass psychosis, where you couldn’t say anything against the prevailing narrative. As a result, I barely worked in 2021. I was ostracised, cancelled.’
Then came a lifeline — a job offer from GB News, ‘who didn’t mind being counter-narrative and said ‘we quite like that girl’.’
Now she is on air for four days a week, paid to be as outspoken as she likes, to do battle with politicians on live TV.
For Beverley Turner, it is living the dream. ‘She’s very clever,’ says James, admiringly.
And then she gets to go home to a man who will probably have filled the fridge, decided what’s for tea, sorted the drip on the bathroom tap, and still have enough energy for afters.
‘Thank you, universe!’ she says.