Anthea Turner has revealed that she wrote a letter to her then-husband Grant Bovey to explain her behavioural changes due to the menopause, unaware that he was having an affair with a 24-year-old interior designer. The former Blue Peter presenter, now 62, said she struggled to communicate with her husband of 12 years due to her busy work schedule, so she decided to pen her feelings in the hope of fostering understanding.
Speaking on the Postcards From Midlife podcast, Turner described her menopause symptoms as feeling like “somebody’s invaded your body.” She said: “I hadn’t a clue what was going on. All your markers are all out by a few degrees. I got spots on my back and I was sweating. I felt my confidence was going. I was getting brain fog, I was questioning myself.”
Turner, who was married to Bovey for 15 years before their divorce in 2015, said she turned to hormone replacement therapy (HRT), which she described as “golden.” She added: “You want to turn to the person who’s the most important in your life, your husband, and I couldn’t. But, of course, what I didn’t realise is at the time he was going through his own little menopause, and he’d obviously taken up with a very exciting in his life, 24-year-old. So a sweaty, moaning wife was just like the last thing he wanted.”
The couple briefly reconciled in 2013 after Bovey’s affair with Zoe de Mallet Morgan came to light, but eventually divorced. Turner said she wrote the letter to explain her symptoms, but later learned more about menopause through reading. “I tried to explain. I thought I’ll write it all down and I wrote it all down,” she said.
