With their romance now out of the shadows, Fearne Cotton and TV director Elliot Hegarty stepped out hand-in-hand last week.
Following the end of their marriages late last year, and having kept a low profile since being spotted kissing passionately during a night out in Soho in February, it was with a lighter step that the couple strolled around leafy Richmond in south-west London.
And with Hegarty, 53, now sporting a fresh peroxide blond makeover to match 43-year-old broadcaster Fearne’s golden locks, the kissing drama that exposed their relationship seemed to be a world away.
At the time, both had split from their partners just weeks earlier and Hegarty’s devastated wife Laura was said to have only known the pair were dating when the passionate photos were published.
It was a plot that could have come from TV series Rivals, the Jilly Cooper bonkbuster novel which Hegarty had just directed, or perhaps his BBC1 drama Cheaters.
An insider said Laura, 51, is still ‘finding it hard to come to terms with Hegarty’s new relationship’ but has ‘kept her head down and concentrated on the children’ at their £2million marital home in north London.
The source added: ‘He has even changed his look and cropped and peroxided his hair since this all started. He was always handsome but more low-key with mousey brown hair. He’s like a different person now.’
Fearne’s husband of ten years Jesse Wood, 48, son of Rolling Stone Ronnie, was said to have been equally shattered when he found she had moved on so quickly just 11 weeks after confirming their separation.
Fearne, who has two children Rex, 12, and Honey, nine, opened up last week about her struggles as a single parent.
‘Sometimes I have a cry in my car, call one of my best friends and go, “Are you having a sh**show too?” Yeah… OK, it’s not just me. And then I crack on. And then it feels slightly better the next day,’ she told a Women’s Health podcast.
