21
I was lucky at Cam-
bridge to have met
lots of people I wouldn’t
usually have met but I didn’t think
for one second one would end up
becoming my girlfriend.
It was amazing I did meet her,
because I was so busy. I was up at
6am to go rowing every morning
and the rest of my time I was
buried in books. I have never
read so much in my life.
‘What I found really refreshing is
that because Jordan is from New
York, she had no perception of row-
ing. She knew nothing about it.
‘She treated me as I was. She had
no knowledge of me or anything ISeptember 1 • 2019 The Mail on Sunday^
had been through over the past
eight years – though she quickly
learned I am rubbish at answering
my phone.
‘It is really fun being with Jordan
and I feel very lucky.
‘But I feel even luckier to have
three amazing children who have
an amazing mum.’
James’s remarks about his mar-
riage are still tinged with sadness.
‘Nobody is the same person
after 17 years of marriage as they
were on the first day,’ he says.
‘But if you live with it long enough
and if one or both of you lose the
belief that it is going to get better,
then it’s terminal.
‘In the end you think: Do you want
to get old with this person?
Do you like the same things when
you go on holiday?
‘For me, it has always been about
the destination, not the journey. For
Bev it’s the opposite.’
James says the accident dealt him
and his ex wife ‘a bad hand’, but
accepts that most relationshipsexperience ‘bad hands’. The couple
remain on good terms, with Bever-
ley yesterday defending her ex hus-
band against claims he is having a
midlife crisis appearing on Strictly.
The TV and radio presenter, 45,
tweeted: ‘Blimey this is really
unfair. He’s a driven man. Olympi-
ans can’t just sit still! He’ll always
set goal after goal. He’s just an
athlete doing a reality show.’
James, meanwhile, says he has
yet to work out what the new fam-
ily dynamic will be. Since the split,
he has moved into his own flat a
few miles from his former marital
home in Chiswick, West London,
which is ‘near enough to be able to
really help out’.
‘The most important thing is the
bond with my kids,’ he says. ‘Work-
ing out what works.
‘It is very tough waking up and
not seeing your children first thing
in the morning, so we need to find
that new normal, that new dynamic
between us. Ten months was a long
time not to be living at home all ofthe time. Since the accident,
I’ve spent so much time
there with the kids and that
is never going to be the
default setting again.
‘That’s really hard, but
then you make every day
that much better when you
are with them.
‘That is something I have
to learn over the next few
months – though they are
going to be so embarrassed
about me [on Strictly]. I’m
not sure how much they’ll
want to see.’
James admits that the acci-
dent has left him with major
trauma. For three years afterwards,
he lived in a world that doctors
described to Beverley as ‘Planet
James’. It was a place where he
would often forget details of the
previous day and felt ‘people were
talking to me really loudly and
really slowly, like I was French’.
‘I was like, “I can understand you,
but I won’t remember the conver-
sation tomorrow,” ’ he said. ‘I
wouldn’t remember meeting them
the next day. I have a very good
memory up to the accident, but I
have no memory of it happening or
weeks and months afterwards.
‘I didn’t have much recollection of
2010, really, but I do know I became
more stubborn, more selfish, more
dedicated. The two areas of the
brain that got really impacted werethe right side and the front. I didn’t
have much social filter or much
ability to plan and organise – high
executive function – and that was
part of the problem.
‘I was misunderstood. It is a mis-
understood illness, a hidden illness
that really affects people around
you, and Bev definitely bore the
brunt of it.’
James is now vice-president of
Headway, a charity that supports
sufferers of brain injuries and to
which he has asked The Mail on
Sunday to make a donation.
However, the accident doesn’t
entirely seem to have put him off
speed – he was recently spotted on
a Honda VFR800F motorbike while
leaving the BBC studios after the
Strictly launch party in White City.
Ex England goalkeeper David
James, TV’s Anneka Rice and
former Coronation Street star Cath-
erine Tyldesley are also among the
line-up for the show, which begins
next weekend.
‘I am a good dancer at certain
times of the night but the show isn’t
on then, it’s a bit early,’ he jokes.
His reason for signing up, he says,
is to mark a new chapter in his life.
He wants to learn how to let him-
self go, not to have the drive to win
at all costs and – most importantly- to learn not to worry about show-
ing weakness or vulnerability.
He says Beverley has been sup-
portive about his decision to go on
Strictly although ‘the kids were
like, ‘No!’
Only time will tell if this Dad
Dancer would have been better
listening to his children.
I knew that
we were in
trouble. It was
the last roll
of the dice
DANCE RIVAL: James Cracknell and actress Catherine Tyldesley, and, top,
with new love Jordan Connell, whom he met while studying at CambridgeLES WILSON / REXV