Jane McDonald Reveals Reason Ex-Husband Left To Save Her Career

Jane McDonald has opened up for the first time about the end of second marriage, revealing her husband left her to “save her career”.

Jane met her former husband Henrik Brizen when she was working on cruise ships, with Jane working as a performer and Henrik working as a plumber on board the ship.

At the time, Jane was filming the BBC show The Cruise, a role that thrust her into the limelight. Their romance was a key theme on the fly-on-the-wall show.

Following their whirlwind at-sea love story, Jane and Henrik went onto marry in 1998, with their wedding featuring on the reality TV show. Henrik took over managing Jane’s music career, which was blossoming following the success of The Cruise.

However, the 57-year-old star has now revealed that the couple’s marriage only lasted four years because Henrik believed her would prevent Jane from being successful.

Speaking to the Mirror, Jane revealed: “Henrik tried his very very best and he was brilliant at what he did, but he didn’t know the industry.

“We’d come to a point where Henrik had made quite a few enemies and he said, ‘If I don’t leave you, you are never going to have a career.’ And that is why I never talk about Henrik in a bad light at all because he was the one that walked out of the marriage to save my career.”

Following her divorce, Jane went on to have a successful career in the entertainment industry, appearing on Loose Women for ten years and performing at iconic venues like the London Palladium and in Las Vegas. She even went on to win herself the nickname the ‘Queen of Cruise’, thanks to her BAFTA-nominated TV show, Cruising with Jane McDonald.

Jane also found love again, and has been in a relationship with her childhood love interest Eddie since 2007.

Jane and her partner Walter Rothe, or “Eddie”, dated as teenagers but broke things off as their careers took off in different directions.

The TV star revealed she was missing Eddie on a recent episode of her new Channel 5 series, Jane McDonald’s Weekends Away, which saw Jane jet off to Malta and Corfu.

Eddie asked Jane to marry him in 2008 and the pair remains engaged, so watch this space for wedding news…