EARLIER this year, I wrote that famous “kiss and tellers” throughout tabloid history were rarely motivated by money.
The majority were doing it because, in modern parlance, they’d been ghosted and it hurt.
They wanted to be heard, not just by the person who had promised them the world while the affair was going on, but also by the people who remained inner circle while they’d been cast aside.
Now imagine that it wasn’t just you being made to feel like an irrelevance, but your children too.
Consequently, England and Man City defender Kyle Walker is facing perhaps his most tenacious attacker yet — reality star Lauryn Goodman, his former mistress and mother to his son, four, and daughter, one.
She’s refusing to go quietly into the night and has recently faced him down in court over maintenance demands that, on the face of it, appear to be cold-hearted money-grabbing.
A car for Lauryn herself every three years. A car for the nanny. An AstroTurf garden for the baby who, despite not walking yet, has a mean side-kick that suggests she, er, might play for the Lionesses one day.
But dig a little deeper and one might charitably conclude that the real motivation is that she’s a tiger mum scorned.
“My kids should have what Kyle and [wife] Annie’s kids have, says Lauryn, 33. “The law states that they should have the same.”
In other words, it’s not really about AstroTurf, per se, but about seeking equality and relevance for the children she feels have been emotionally abandoned by their “errant father”.
In an interview with The Sun on Sunday at the weekend, her hurt was palpable.
She says Kyle “was present in Kairo and Kinara’s life and then just turned his back on them, when he promised he never would”.
She adds: “What mother wouldn’t fight for that little abandoned boy and his sister? One day they will know what their father did — and what their mother did for them.”
When you have a child, the urge to protect them from harm, both physical and emotional, is visceral.
You love them so much that the thought of anyone in the family not feeling the same way, let alone their father, is as deeply wounding as it is perplexing.
“I hope one day my children will be proud. I love them so much and I have done all I can to protect their future.
“I am the only parent in their life. I have to do that,” says Lauryn, who claims that all the money she asked for was for them alone.
She also claims the house they live in “belongs to him” and is “an investment for him and one day I will leave it”.
So while the financial demands read out in court are beyond the realms of what most people can afford, Kyle Walker is on £160k a week.
And let’s not forget that, despite being trolled when her demands were revealed, it’s not Lauryn who betrayed Annie; Kyle was the one who stood at an altar and made vows.
Sarah Symonds, who once did a kiss-and-tell on Gordon Ramsay, wrote to a newspaper this week in support of Lauryn, applauding her on behalf of “other women” everywhere for “having her day in court”.
She wrote: “Keep going Lauryn. The Sisterhood of the Mistresshood are behind you. People will only treat you how you let them.”
So while some of Lauryn’s demands are indeed excessive, there’s a small part of me that applauds her for refusing to be kicked to the kerb by an arrogant Premier League footballer who used her when it suited him then, when it didn’t, emotionally abandoned her and their kids.
ACRES of column inches have been written on Katie Price’s ability to carry on with jaunts abroad despite being declared bankrupt for the second time.
So I’ll make this observation instead.
She is currently in Turkey for her umpteenth cosmetic procedure on her face.
Begging the question: What self- respecting medic would continue to carry out “tweakments” on someone who will clearly never feel happy with what they see in the mirror?
DISGRACED former BBC newsreader Huw Edwards continued to receive his £479,999-a-year salary despite being suspended from work.
He even received a £40k pay hike.
Tim Davie, Director-General of the BBC, explained that it was a “difficult” decision but he was following employment law that ensures “employees are protected and there’s no risk”.
And as Edwards was an employee of the BBC, Mr Davie admitted it would be almost impossible to claw back any salary paid since his arrest in November or to stop his generous pension.
Now imagine it was Adrian Chiles, another well-known face on our screens, who had found himself in a position where he would lose his job.
He would have been dropped at the first sign of trouble, with zero pay, zero benefits and zero employee protections.
Why? Because Adrian is a freelance contractor who works for the Beeb and other media platforms via his company Basic Broadcasting Ltd.
And yet he’s already been dragged through three tribunals by HMRC (with a fourth pending) who reckon he should be classed as an employee under complex IR35 legislation that no one understands.
In other words, they want him to pay the same level of tax as Huw but with none of the associated employment benefits. Go figure.
ON holiday 20 years ago, Andy Walker hit his head on a rock diving into the sea in India and was paralysed from the neck down.
Now the Oldham-based 47-year-old plans to raise money for charity by cycling a 1,000-mile length of Britain on a bike controlled by his chin.
He says: “Since my accident, I’ve had absolute conviction and determination to lead a full and rewarding life.”
So, the next time we feel sorry for ourselves because a holiday flight is delayed or the car has broken down, we should all be a little bit more Andy and not sweat the petty stuff.
RICHARD MADELEY’S daughter Chloe has asked people to stop bad-mouthing her rugby star ex James Haskell online.
She says there’s “a heavy insinuation that he’s not a nice guy” and adds: “We went through our battles but we’re co-parenting really well and 50 per cent of that accolade is on him.
“I want him to have some of that respect from people, which I don’t see him getting.”
Given that so many celebrity couples publicly fling mud at each other after a break-up, how refreshing to hear someone throwing compliments instead.
MODEL Rosie Huntington-Whiteley has posted this photo of herself following a lymphatic drainage treatment that rids the body of “excess fluid”.
I wasn’t aware she had any.
MARRIED racists Dawn Thompson, 48, and Damian Smith, 36, from Gateshead, make a lovely pair, don’t they?
Smith has 13 previous convictions for 16 offences, including theft, criminal damage, burglary, battery, possession of a blade and possession of class A drugs.
While Thompson has 63 previous convictions for 181 offences, the majority of which were for theft, but also included racially aggravated harassment and witness intimidation.
Together, they have just been jailed for the violent harassment of a Kurdish neighbour in their council block who was hit with a pole, punched in the face, and told to “go back to his country”.
Presumably this reprehensible pair regard themselves to be 100 per cent British and, therefore, superior to their poor victim.
I beg to differ.
There’s definitely a bit of Neanderthal in there somewhere.
WHAT, one wonders, goes through the clearly tiny mind of whoever sent a death threat to actress Amanda Abbington?
The message warned her that she would “die on stage” unless she retracts her bullying complaint about former Strictly dance partner Giovanni Pernice.
Given that she’s currently performing in a small theatre to assembled strangers, this threatening email must have been terrifying to receive.
Yes, you could argue that it was probably sent by a sad loser whose bravado vaporises the second they step away from their keyboard.
But equally, there’s a lot of irrational anger on our streets right now, so who wants to take the risk of underestimating the sender’s true intentions?
Whoever they are, I hope they are found, named, shamed and prosecuted as a deterrent to anyone else who is thinking of behaving in such a reprehensible way.
