Anthea Turner

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Anthea Turner
Anthea Turner.jpg
Turner at a book signing in 2008
Born Anthea Millicent Turner
(1960-05-25) 25 May 1960 (age 63)
Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England
Residence Surrey, England
Occupation Journalist, television presenter and media personality
Notable credit(s) Presenting:
Blue Peter (1992–94)
Top of the Pops (1988–91)
GMTV (1994–96)
Perfect Housewife (2006–07)
Spouse(s) Peter Powell (1990–1998; divorced)
Grant Bovey (2000–2015; divorced)
Children 3 stepdaughters
Parent(s) Brian and Jean Turner[1]
Website Official website

Anthea Millicent Turner (born 25 May 1960) is an English television presenter and media personality, best known for co-hosting GMTV from 1994 until 1996.

Early life

Turner was born in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, and educated there at the independent catholic St Dominic's High School for Girls, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire. She was one of three daughters born to her parents Brian and Jean Turner. One of her sisters, Ruth died aged 15. Her other sister is presenter Wendy Turner Webster[1]

Career

Turner joined BBC Radio Stoke as a runner, eventually joining breakfast show presenter Bruno Brookes as part of his rap crew. The couple became romantically involved and employed Peter Powell as an agent through his management company.

Television

Turner moved into television through Sky Channel and Music Box presenting live music programmes from July 1986 to 1989. Her debut on national television was with the BBC on But First This, which led to her fronting two series for the BBC on the Saturday morning show UP2U.

During a motorbike stunt that went wrong on UP2U,[2] Turner suffered burns and temporary hearing loss, which led to her successful lawsuit against the BBC.[citation needed]

She presented Top of the Pops from October 1988 to May 1991, and, for the final 18 months of this period, was the only non-Radio 1 DJ to regularly do so.

Turner presented the children's television show Blue Peter from 27 June 1992 to 29 June 1994, and around this time, was also associated with publicising 'The Y Plan', a system of exercise developed by the London YMCA. She moved on to presenting on Totally Live on pan-European music channel Music Box, followed by GMTV which she presented from July 1994 to 24 December 1996.

Turner was also a host on the first National Lottery draw on BBC One on 19 November 1994 with Noel Edmonds and Gordon Kennedy. She remained as sole host of the National Lottery Live until 20 April 1996, when she defected to ITV and the travel show Wish You Were Here...?, becoming the second highest paid female television presenter in the UK, after Cilla Black.[citation needed]

Turner released two work-out videos: Anthea Turner Body Basics (1996) and Anthea Turner: Tone, Lift and Condition: The Inch Buster (1999), both produced and distributed by Grant Bovey.[citation needed]

The relationship between Turner and her GMTV co-presenter Eamonn Holmes was frosty, with Holmes issuing an ultimatum to the GMTV management that he would leave if they did not sack his colleague; as a result of this Turner lost her job.[3] After Bovey left his wife Della for Turner, the ensuing tabloid interest, and then the "Flakegate" scandal, Turner's career went into a decline.

Attempting to revive her career, Turner presented BBC One's short-lived Saturday evening programme Your Kids Are in Charge in 2000 with her sister Wendy Turner Webster. The following year, she participated in Celebrity Big Brother, and was the third contestant to be evicted, after Chris Eubank and Vanessa Feltz. But nothing seemed to work to erase the fallout from the media reaction to Flakegate, and in 2003 she came 15th in a Channel 4 poll of 100 Worst Britons.

In February 2006, Turner made a television comeback on BBC Three in Anthea Turner: Perfect Housewife, where she taught disorganised house women and men how to clean and run their houses. This period was widely referred to in the television industry as the "Turner Renaissance"[citation needed]. The series was accompanied by three related books. Later in 2006, she appeared as a guest on BBC Two's music-based panel show Never Mind the Buzzcocks.

In April 2009, Turner appeared on the ITV reality show Hell's Kitchen with Marco Pierre White, alongside her then husband Grant Bovey. Turner also presented the show Help Me Anthea, I'm Infested for BBC Three, as she advised people whose homes have been overrun by pests.[citation needed] Anthea took part in the first series of the Channel 4 game show The Jump in 2013. The show saw twelve celebrities take part in winter sports. The show is set in a mountainside in Austria.

On August 23, 2015, she replaced Anne Diamond and Sian Welby as the host of the Health Lottery draws on Channel 5.[4] until Welby returned on 2 October.[5]

She took part in a special celebrity edition of Channel 4's First Dates on 12 October 2015, in aid of Stand Up To Cancer.[6]

She has worked alongside Ideal World to create her own range of home storage solutions.

Dancing on Ice

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Main article: Dancing on Ice

In 2013, Turner appeared as a contestant in the eighth series of Dancing on Ice, where she finished in ninth place out of twelve celebrity skaters. She participated in the show with her professional skating partner Andrew Buchanan. In the third week she performed to the Donny Osmond song "Puppy Love", and ended up in the skate-off against Keith Chegwin. They lost the skate-off and were the fourth couple to be eliminated in the series.[citation needed]

Week Song Judges' scores Result
Robin Cousins Karen Barber Ashley Roberts Jason Gardiner Total
2 "Skyfall" 4.5 4.5 4.5 4.5 18.0 Bottom two
3 "Broken Strings" Anthea Anthea Anthea Anthea Anthea Immune
4 "Puppy Love" 4.5 5.0 5.0 4.0 18.5 Eliminated
  • Note: Week 3 was a duel, in which the judges did not give scores, instead the celebrities were paired up and the judges chose which performance they preferred, making them immune from the public vote.

Personal life

Turner's private life has led the tabloids to take a continuing interest in her.

After her long relationship with fellow Stoke resident and one-time DJ co-worker Bruno Brookes, she married her manager, former DJ Peter Powell in 1990; the couple divorced in 1998.

The year of her divorce from Powell, Turner moved in with the CEO of Imagine Homes, Grant Bovey. Bovey left his wife, Della, to move in with Turner; he reconciled with Della, before leaving her again to return to Turner. Turner and Bovey married on 23 August 2000. Turner was keen to start her own family with Bovey, who has three daughters (Lily, Amelia and Claudia) from his marriage to Della.[7]

On 23 February 2009, the Daily Mail reported that their Surrey mansion had been put up for sale owing to catastrophic failures in Bovey's buy-to-let property business.[8][9] The newspaper reported Turner was making television commercials for household detergents to alleviate financial difficulties.

Turner and Bovey briefly split up in 2012, due to Bovey's extramarital affair.[10][11] In January 2013, Turner was quoted as saying: "Last year was awful, horrible, one of the worst. But at the end of the day Grant is my future, my soulmate."[11] However they separated again in August 2013, this time permanently. They divorced in October, 2015.

Controversies

In 2000, Turner received negative publicity from tabloid newspapers when photographs of her wedding reception, published in the magazine OK! in an exclusive deal worth £450,000, showed the couple (apparently) using their wedding to publicise a new Cadbury chocolate bar, Snowflake. OK! issued the photo to the media with the caption "Anthea Turner and Grant Bovey: exclusive OK! wedding photograph, enjoying Cadbury's new Snowflake. For the complete wedding coverage and a free Cadburys Snowflake, buy OK! magazine this weekend. OK! First for celebrity news." The Sun described it as "the most sickening wedding photo ever", and the event is now referred to as "Flakegate".[12] Turner, Bovey, Cadbury's and OK! all denied that the chocolate was part of a sponsorship deal.[13]

The wedding was paid for by OK! magazine.[citation needed] Pictures of their wedding and their subsequent honeymoon were in the magazine for the next two weeks. Turner and Bovey insist that someone had stuck the chocolate bar in her hand and snapped a picture before she knew what was happening, though both are seen biting down on each of their own bars.[10] Richard Desmond the proprietor of OK! and his wife were sitting next to the newly married Boveys at the time.

Books

  • "Underneath the Underground: The Ghost of Knightsbridge"[14] (1998) – with Wendy Turner Webster
  • "Fools Rush In"[15] (2000)
  • "How To Be The Perfect Housewife: Lessons in the art of modern household management"[16] (2007)
  • "How to be the Perfect Housewife: Entertain in Style"[17] (2008)
  • "The Perfect Christmas"[18] (2008)

Filmography

Television
Year Title Role
1988–1991 Top of the Pops Presenter
1992–94 Blue Peter Presenter
1994–96 GMTV Presenter
1994–96 The National Lottery Draws Presenter
1996–99 Wish You Were Here...? Presenter
2000 Your Kids are in Charge Presenter
2001 Celebrity Big Brother Participant
2006–07 Anthea Turner: Perfect Housewife Presenter
2007 Help Me Anthea, I'm Infested Presenter
2010–11 Dinner Party Wars Presenter
2013 Dancing on Ice Contestant
2014 The Jump Contestant
2015— The Health Lottery Draws Presenter
Guest appearances

External links

References

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  5. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAXajvQgW-0
  6. ↑ http://www.channel4.com/info/press/news/first-dates-su2c-special-to-feature-anthea-turner-and-alexandra-burke
  7. ↑ [1] (subscription required)
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  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  12. ↑ [2] Archived 7 March 2006 at the Wayback Machine
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Preceded by Blue Peter Presenter No. 20
1992–94		 Succeeded by
Stuart Miles
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