Anthea Turner

Early life

Turner was born in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, and educated there at the direct grant grammar catholic school . St Dominic's High School for Girls hartshill 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.

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, Turner suffered burns and temporary hearing loss, which led to a successful lawsuit against the BBC.

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.

Turner released two workout videos: Anthea Turner Body Basics (1996) and Anthea Turner: Tone, Lift and Condition: The Inch Buster (1999), both produced and distributed by Grant Bovey.

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. After Bovey left his wife Della for Turner, the ensuing tabloid interest, 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.

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". 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. 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 23 August 2015 she replaced Anne Diamond and Sian Welby as the host of The Health Lottery Draws on Channel 5. Welby later returned on 2 October and Anthea was dropped from the line-up.

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.

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.

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.

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. The newspaper reported Turner was making television commercials for household detergents to alleviate financial difficulties.

Turner and Bovey split up in 2012, due to Bovey's extramarital affair. After an initial reconciliation, they separated again in August 2013, this time permanently and they divorced in October 2015.

Books

Appearances