Fern Britton has detailed how your “heart sinks” when hearing one sound (Image: ITV)
Fern Britton has opened up about how her heart would “sink” when hearing one particular sound, which she described as the “worst” part of marriage. Fern, who has been wed twice, announced her split from TV chef Phil Vickery in 2020. She was previously married to Clive Jones, with whom she has three older children. The former This Morning star also shares a daughter, Winnie, with Phil.
Fern announced her split from chef Phil Vickery in 2020 (Image: Getty)
She candidly told The Telegraph: “That moment when you hear the key in the lock and your heart sinks because things haven’t been going well. What’s the mood? What’s the temperature? That feeling of here we go again.”
In September 2025, Fern shed light on her single life with Woman’s Weekly. She told the magazine that she was “enjoying life”, adding: “I’m in a good place, I feel that I’ve found the person that I used to be, and I’m enjoying life and having fun.”
She also said that she relies on “a really great girlfriend network”, who are “good at putting the world to rights”.
Elsewhere in the interview, she addressed the possibility of finding love again, but it appeared that she wasn’t “looking” for it. She explained that she remained a “bit too wary” of losing her freedom.
Fern admitted: “I don’t want to live with anyone – and I don’t want to get married again. I’m a very independent person and the older I get, the more I realise I like my freedom.”
Fern has opened up about the “worst” aspect of marriage (Image: Getty)
It comes after Fern revealed why she left BBC Breakfast (which she hosted from September 1983 until 1986) after being “decimated” and told she was “terrible”.
Speaking to James O’Brien on his Full Disclosure podcast, Fern claimed: “I left because I was very unhappy there. The editor hated me, Frank hated me. It was made very, very difficult for me.”
She noted there was one incident in particular that led to her exit. She recalled: “There was one morning when the editor walked in at 8 o’clock sort of halfway through the morning and he came through the forest of cameras and he said to me: ‘You are terrible, you are awful, now sit down there and do another hour’.
“After the show, he called me into his office and locked it, he was in there with his deputy editor and they just shredded me and I cried and cried and cried.”
Fern later claimed that she was told to “put some make-up on” before she left the office. James asked: “Because he didn’t want everyone to know you’d been crying?”
She ended by claiming that “what he did” was “really bad”, saying that the situation “decimated” her.
A BBC spokesperson told the Mirror: “We’re sorry to hear if anyone has had a bad experience in the past. Today’s BBC has robust policies and processes in place to ensure duty of care for all who work for us.”
