Anyone who follows Fearne Cotton on social media knows how the TV presenter turned social media star places strong mental health at the heart of everything she does.
Through her award-winning podcast, Happy Place, she offers devotees advice and tips on how to stay mentally fit in the modern world. And over on Instagram, the mother-of-two regularly posts in support of mental health charity Mind, telling her four million followers it’s ‘time to talk.’
Indeed, so successful is she in the wellness field that it’s now her main source of income. Which makes the contrast with the developments in her personal life all the more jarring.
Eleven weeks after splitting from her musician husband Jesse Wood, son of Rolling Stone Ronnie, 43-year-old Fearne was spotted publicly kissing TV director Elliot Hegarty – who is ten years her senior.
I’m told Jesse had known about Fearne’s relationship with Elliot, who worked on the raunchy Disney+ hit Rivals, for some time before they were captured kissing on a busy London street. Nevertheless, those close to him found the speed at which she’s appeared to have moved on with her life galling. ‘You can imagine how that all went down in the Wood world,’ said a source close to the family.
‘Of course, Fearne having a new man was something that was being discussed in recent weeks. But the truth is they have found her quite irritating for some time. Fearne used to be adored by the Woods. They had hoped that things could be more amicable when Fearne and Jesse split.’
Eleven weeks after splitting from her husband Jesse Wood, son of Rolling Stone Ronnie, Fearne was spotted publicly kissing TV director Elliot Hegarty
Insiders say the pictures have left Fearne ‘shell shocked’ as she hadn’t expected her new romance to be made public so soon.
It’s likely she would have wanted to share the happy news on her social media herself when she felt the time was right.
Perhaps, as a friend of the Woods tells me, ‘she hoped she could get away with it for a bit longer so it all looked a little more tasteful.’
In the world of social media, brands, public perception and timing is everything – and this after all could be potentially damaging to her brand.
One woman who won’t be tuning in to Fearne’s weekly podcast is Laura Hegarty, the wife of Fearne’s new man. Laura, a 51-year-old mother-of-three who lives in north London, is said to have been dumped by her husband on Boxing Day. I’m told she had no idea that her estranged husband had moved on with Fearne until she saw the pictures.
According to a friend, the photos ‘added to her heartbreak’ and the romance coming out like that ‘did not help matters. Imagine how awkward that will all be now’. A TV producer who knows Elliot admits details of the new relationship have shocked many in the business. ‘It has been the talk of the industry all week, it’s pretty astonishing, Fearne’s ex is quite cool.’
My source added of Elliot: ‘He’s a dapper guy but we didn’t see that one coming.’
Last December Fearne stunned her fans when she revealed her separation from Jesse. It came as a shock, even to those who consider themselves to know the couple well, as Fearne was wearing her wedding ring in a post just two days earlier.
Last December Fearne, 43, stunned her fans when she revealed her separation from Jesse. They are pictured at the Baftas in 2016
Fearne hasn’t, however, been quite so forthcoming about her new boyfriend – something which has raised eyebrows among those expecting candour even when her world is not quite as perfect as once portrayed.
To the outside world, Fearne and Jesse were an idyllic blended family. They were living in a beautiful six-bedroom property in south-west London with their two children, 11 and nine, and had regular visits from Jesse’s two adult children from his first marriage.
‘They were a lovely couple who clearly worked well for a time,’ said a friend of the former children’s TV presenter. ‘But Fearne has changed a lot since they got together, she was a kind of rock chick when they first met and now she has turned into a bit of a hippy dippy therapy type.’
The pair met in 2011 while Fearne was on a girls’ trip in Ibiza and are said to have hit it off immediately, with Fearne ‘besotted’ with Jesse, 48, who was bona fide rock royalty.
Their marriage was a decade ago at Richmond Register Office in front of guests including Keith Lemon, Dermot O’Leary and Fearne’s one-time best friend Holly Willoughby, with whom she started in children’s television in the early noughties.
A friend tells me: ‘Fearne was so happy when she met Jesse, she literally wouldn’t stop smiling. He was handsome and kind, she had been really bruised by what had happened to her in the past.’
A source close to the Woods said that Fearne ‘used to be adored’ by the family, but ‘they have found her quite irritating for some time’. Fearne, Jesse and Ronnie Wood are pictured in 2011
Indeed, at age 30 she finally believed she had met The One after a turbulent love life. Back in 2003, just as she was becoming a household name on children’s programme, The Saturday Show, she dated Peter Brame – winner of that year’s BBC talent series Fame Academy. Employed as a squeaky-clean BBC host, Fearne was horrified when she was forced to address Brame’s admission he had smoked crack and taken cocaine on a night out with a group of glamour models.
Two years later, she embarked on a relationship with Lost Prophets frontman Ian Watkins. After they split, he was jailed for a string of child sex offences – including the attempted sexual abuse of a baby.
She had no knowledge of his behaviour. He was sentenced to 29 years in prison with a further six years on licence.
Despite these partnerships, Fearne continued her TV career, hosting shows such as Top of the Pops and Celebrity Juice. In 2017 she wrote her first book, Happy, and launched Happy Place – a wellness podcast and brand which has amassed over 100million downloads.
It has been lucrative for her and last summer she held a festival named after her podcast at London’s Chiswick House, for which she charged £42 a ticket and hired Denise van Outen and Jason Donovan to talk at the sold-out event.
Fearne also has an app which promises to ‘aid the journey in finding balance, restoration and happiness’, her own book imprint, which has published seven of her own books and 17 of her friends’, a vinyl record of her favourite tracks, and a clothing line including a £50 sweatshirt and £28 bucket hat.
I’m told her work has left some of her friends ‘irritated’. ‘Her self-righteousness is all rather boring,’ said one who knows her.
But were there signs that all was not well? During an interview last month, listeners may have picked up hints that Fearne was not happy with her lot in life.
‘I would be so full of resentment that I’d gone along with someone else’s desires and left myself at the bottom of the pile,’ she said.
‘There you go! No more leaving ourselves at the bottom of the pile. One thing I will say the older I get, and I’m hurtling towards, I’m in my mid-40s, and it’s getting easier… It doesn’t mitigate the discomfort and the pain it can cause but I definitely feel a lot more able to do it.’
As Jesse Wood now knows only too well.
