Anthea Turner’s heartbreaking ‘barrage of abuse’ after wedding Flake-gate disaster
Anthea Turner has opened about the torrent of abuse she received after being snapped eating a Cadbury’s Snowflake on her wedding day in 2000
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Anthea Turner has recalled being the target of a “barrage of abuse” over a snap on her wedding day.
Former Blue Peter presenter Anthea, 60, tied the knot in August 2000 with her now ex-husband Grant Bovey.
But one snap, in which the happy couple tucked into Cadbury’s Snowflake bars, landed them with accusations that they’d staged it for profit.
“I was vilified,” she remembered.
“You’d have thought I had single-handedly manufactured Covid-19 in the laboratory and released it to the masses.”
Anthea added to The Sun : “I received this barrage of abuse and was accused of selling out at my own wedding.
“I honestly didn’t receive a penny for that photo and had no idea at the time the furore it would cause.”
The snap had been taken by their wedding day photographer, Anthea and Grant having no idea the backlash it would spark.
Anthea and Grant met in 1998, when they were both already married.
She continued that she felt for years like she “needed to apologise…for just being, apologising for the fact I had an affair with a married man, apologising for the fact I apparently did this heinous thing with a bar of Cadbury’s.”
Anthea shut herself away at the time, losing friends as her embarrassment forced her to cut people off.
They found out about the backlash during their honeymoon in Kenya, which Anthea says created a difficult start to their marriage.
She and Grant sold the rights to their wedding to OK! magazine.
It’s said the magazine and OK! had agreed a deal – but without Anthea or Grant’s knowledge.
And the debacle even threatened her career, as Anthea “lost so much work” as she was “tainted.”
Anthea didn’t seek out therapy at the time, but more recently she tells that she’s gone through “two spells of it…to move on and let go of some anger.”
The star recently returned to our screens with a stint on SAS: Who Dares Wins, braving the wet, wind and cold, as well as Ant Middleton and his special forces pals.
She’s now set to wed fiance and businessman Mark Armstrong, with Covid throwing a spanner in the works of their planned Italy ceremony.
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