The Daily Telegraph - 07.08.2019

22 ***^ Wednesday 7 August 2019 The Daily Telegraph

FEATURES

I ADMIT IT CAN BE SWEET TO SEE

AN EX’S RELATIONSHIP COLLAPSE

BY ANYA MEYEROWITZ

I

never saw it coming.

Sam* and I felt

unbreakable. We’d

survived time apart,

family stress and a stint in

hospital. He was the last

person I ever thought

would hurt me – until he

started a relationship

with a colleague and

ditched me. Just like

that.

So when I first heard

that Paul Hollywood had

left his wife, Alex, for

Summer Monteys-Fullam,

I empathised. Sam’s new

girlfriend may not have

been 29 years his junior,

and it might not have

played out in the media,

but the betrayal was the

same.

I also felt a pang of

recognition when, this

week, their relationship

suddenly ended.

Time might heal, but

nothing mends your heart

like seeing your ex’s new

relationship – the one that

blossomed under your

nose – crumble. There’s

something delicious

about the disintegration

of a love that destroyed

your own, something Alex

Hollywood undoubtedly

knows.

I first heard about

Jessica* after Sam started

a new job. I spotted a

photo of his colleagues on

Facebook, having drinks.

He told me about

everyone in the picture,

but when he got to Jessica

he hesitated and

muttered, “She’s nice”.

Three months later,

scrolling through

Instagram, I saw a picture

that stopped my heart.

Sam was beaming and

leaning towards another

woman. I couldn’t see her

face clearly, but I knew it

was Jessica.

“We need to talk,” I

texted, hoping to incite

fear in him. He replied, “I

want to talk to you, too.”

A few hours later, he

told me he didn’t feel the

same way anymore. I

begged him to stay. We

were stronger than this,

surely? We weren’t, and

two weeks later they

updated their

relationship status on

Facebook.

The new couple wasted

no time in filling social

media with snapshots of

mini-breaks and posts

professing their eternal

love. Within a year, they’d

moved in together. I had

no choice but to accept

that I had been “the one

before the one”.

Then, a year later,

friends began telling me

about arguments on

nights out. There were

rumours of complaints

from neighbours over

their furious rows. I was

hooked.

Unlike our relationship,

which faded quietly away,

theirs burst into flames

• and I was watching it
  burn.
  I checked social media
  daily, looking for cracks. I
  didn’t want him back, but
  couldn’t stop my lip from
  twitching when she went
  abroad with friends,
  posting: “I’ll always have
  my girls.” Sam’s
  relationship status
  disappeared.
  It was a joy I felt unable
  to share and I pretended
  not to care when friends

regaled me with salacious

stories. But I felt in

control. I’d pieced my life

back together. They were

at the beginning of what I

knew to be a long road.

“Schadenfreude” is too

simplistic. Yes, I derived

pleasure from their pain,

and yes, I enjoyed

imagining Sam alone in

bed. But I also realised

that I could free myself

from the “scorned

woman” narrative they

had created for me.

Like Alex, anyone who

has been in this position

will know about the

sleepless nights and

“what ifs” that rack your

brain. Don’t we deserve

some joy, however dark,

after that?

I applaud any woman

who is able to rise from

the ashes – and if those

ashes are the cinders of

her ex’s new relationship,

so be it.

*Names have been

changed

I could free

myself from

the ‘scorned

woman’

narrative

L

ike a mirror glaze left

out in the sun, the shine

has rather come off Paul

Hollywood. The Bake

Off star’s straightforward

Scouse manner, blokey

way with dough and pair of blue

steels once garnered him a dedicated

following among women of a certain

age. But two years after his marriage

went down in flames, fresh reports

that his romance with 24-year-old

barmaid Summer Monteys-Fullam is

officially off, suggest that everything

has started to crumble.

The son of a baker himself,

Hollywood steadily rose through

the ranks at The Dorchester and

Cliveden before meeting his

now-ex-wife, Alex, while they

both worked at a hotel in

Cyprus, where she was the

diving instructor.

The couple moved back

to the UK when their son

Josh (now 17) was born, and

Alex, by then working in PR,

encouraged her husband to

do the odd TV job. He was

soon picked as a judge on

what began as an eccentric

little BBC reality show, but

went on to become one of its

most successful franchises.

By the end of the first

series of Great British Bake

Off in 2010, the now 53-year-

old was already emerging

as a bona fide star – he has

an estimated net worth of

£10 million, thanks to book

deals and TV spin-offs – but, in

2013, everything began to go

pear-shaped.

Hollywood went off to

America to front the US version

of the show and promptly started

a somewhat conspicuous, if short-

lived, affair with his 34-year-old

co-judge, Marcela Valladolid. Once

the dust settled, he declared it “the

biggest mistake of my life” and

moved into a converted barn a mile

away from the marital home in

Aylesham, Kent, to take tentative

steps towards a reconciliation. Alex

took him back, saying “everyone

After the end of his

latest romance,

Eleanor Steafel asks

when things started

to crumble for the

blue-eyed baker

Has the shine come off Paul Hollywood?

only one of the original presenting

line-up to “follow the dough” when

the show made its controversial move

to Channel 4 in 2017.

“Ahhhh, a peacocking man-child

lingering wherever the money is,”

former contestant Ruby Tandoh

tartly observed. But though he may

have lost the humble Scouse baker

image, he seemed to have weathered

the storm.

Then, that same summer, he

became close to Monteys-Fullam,

whom he met in his local pub –

the pub he’d booked for his wife’s

birthday party – and, in November,

he and Alex announced their 19-year

marriage was over.

She alleged adultery; he

denied any overlap, but moved

in with Summer, a mile from

the family home, while the

£10 million divorce went

through the courts.

A supposed spat in an M&S

car park aside (during which

Alex was alleged to have shouted

obscenities at Summer, which

she has vehemently denied),

Mrs Hollywood appears to

have played a remarkably

dignified hand during the

whole messy affair.

Though she’ll

presumably have raised

a wry eyebrow at reports

that her ex was dumped

after he demanded his young

girlfriend sign an NDA – they are

now, unedifyingly, alleged to be in

a dispute over who is to keep their

pet chicken, Karen.

Before their divorce was finalised,

last month, Alex had already begun

to plant the seeds for her own

moment in the spotlight.

Despite her first successful book,

she had failed to promote her second

Cooking Tonight (which came out

in January 2017) because “I was

worried about the fact I would

inevitably be asked about my

marriage,” she told The Telegraph

in June. “I let the opportunity go...

That was a mistake.

It’s one she won’t make again.

“Divorce hurts. I was married for 20

years. But you keep going... We don’t

give up, we carry on, we try to do

something good and we survive,” she

said.

And not just survive, but thrive:

Alex was recently given Paul’s slot

at the BBC Good Food Show, when

he became unavailable, and has a

rumoured new cookbook deal in the

offing.

Wouldn’t it be terribly 2019 if she

were to replace her ex on the show

that made him? I smell the heady

whiff of revenge.

Life-changing: Paul

Hollywood and,

clockwise from left,

ex-wife Alex; Noel

Fielding, Prue Leith

and Sandi Toksvig;

Marcela Valladolid,

Ruby Tandoh and

Summer Monteys-

Fullam

‘I was worried

about the fact

I would

inevitably be asked

about my marriage’

thest

Th

beca

who

thep

birth

he a

Creamy, exquisite... why the sea

urchin is spiking our interest

T

he last of the tiny black

spikes is finally out. After

days of walking around

as if tiptoeing across hot

coals, my heel is now free

of sea-urchin spines. I

trod on the damn thing while hobbling

down a scorching pebbled beach on

the Aeolian island of Lipari. As I limped

back to shore, the locals enjoyed the

spectacle – because in Sicily, they don’t

step on sea urchins, they eat them.

And this comes as a surprise to many

tourists, because the idea of eating sea

urchin is about as weird as eating that

other holiday terror, jellyfish.

Yet I can attest to its exquisite flavour

and texture. The spiny shell, when

cracked open, reveals a rusty coloured

roe and meat that is remarkably

unsalty. The Japanese eat it raw –

as sashimi called uni. Wrapped in

seaweed with a dab of wasabi sauce, it

is quite the creamy delicacy.

Now returned from my holidays,

sea urchins seem to have followed me.

According to T&S Enterprise, which

supplies sashimi-grade fish to 500

restaurants in Britain, sales have, um,

spiked. “Whereas a decade ago we

would have supplied between 1,000kg

and 1,500kg of sea urchin, nowadays

that figure is closer to 6,000kg,” said

Richard Cohen, T&S’s sales manager.

Indeed, they have already beaten

me to London. In Borough Market

there is a near-constant queue for a £3

mouthful from the Furness fish stall.

“We’re going through a hell of a

lot of sea urchin at the moment,” says

stallholder Ben McClean, who reckons

he “shucks” around 300 a day; wearing

protective gloves, of course. And while

oysters present particular problems –

the shells can seem impenetrable for

the amateur – sea urchins have their

own, unique challenges. The shells are

One restaurant that does have them

at the moment is Clapham hotspot

Trinity. It has become a favourite

with regulars, according to sous-chef

Harry Kirkpatrick, “because it has

that luxurious taste that you normally

associate with caviar and foie gras”.

But like those two ingredients, as

the popularity of sea urchins grows,

so does the controversy. Stocks are

depleting and, as a truly wild product

of the sea, it is unprotected and there

are worries that the unchecked

harvesting of them will simply

decimate their numbers.

“Wild sea urchin populations have

become overfished,” says Ólafur

Örn Ásmundsson, CEO of Iceland

Seafood, who is experimenting with

ways of farming them. There is now a

dedicated hatchery run by Irishman

John Chamberlain in Dunmanus

Bay, Co Cork, while another business

grows them in tanks off Israel.

This could help to sate the demand.

Already British sushi chains are

putting them on menus, and it’s

only time before we see them on

supermarket shelves.

Although, if squeamish British

palates knew that the gooey

substance oozing out of a sliced

urchin shell is, in fact, gonads, they

might want to avoid eating as well

as stepping on them.

easy to penetrate, but the spikes can

fly off; the mixture within can look an

unpleasant, mucus-like mess. Yet the

flavour – and its juxtaposition with the

creature’s dangerous, black exterior –

is as intriguing as it is delicious.

Many of McClean’s customers are

from the Far East, but he says there is

a growing number of Western faces

waiting in line.

My first taste of sea urchin was

25 years ago, at the Sardinian restaurant

Olivo, which was opened in Belgravia

by Mauro Sanna in 1990. Sanna, a

stickler for perfection, would have the

sea urchins flown in packed in ice. He

would serve them with pasta, but also

raw in the shell for a select number of

Japanese customers ordering off-menu.

Today, they no longer feature on

the menu as the kitchen had difficulty

with supplies. In fact, the rise in the sea

urchin’s popularity means that many

restaurants are struggling – and those

that do get their hands on them are

keeping quiet about their source.

The mucus-like mess

within the spiny

shell is as intriguing

as it is delicious

With the spiny delicacy

appearing on the nation’s

best menus, William

Sitwell gets a taste for it

Handle with care:

once inside the

shell, sea urchin

is remarkably

unsalty

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deserves a mistake”, brought out

her own book – Alex Hollywood: My

Busy Kitchen – and the pair put on a

united publicity front, delivering lines

on daytime TV about how “cooking

can be a very good way to bring

families together”.

Though their marriage was back

on, public affection for Hollywood

had soured slightly. “I can’t go to

sleep on a train any

more because

people take

photos of me,” he told The Telegraph

in 2014, a veiled nod to his discomfort

at having his love life dragged through

the tabloids.

Further gossip abounded, but

pictures of him kissing Bake Off

winner Candice Brown goodbye

after a showbiz party were dismissed

as “harmless”, and the Bake Off

juggernaut

puttered on.

Hollywood

was the

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