The Chase star Mark Labbett has opened up about his marriage in a rare discussion about his personal life. The master quizzer, aka The Beast, spoke to Loose Women on Tuesday about his wife Katie and their life together following claims the couple separated earlier this year following her alleged infidelity. "Like a lot of relationships, you go through a rough patch. We’re working as best we can to get through it,' Mark said on the show.
He added: "But we’ve always tried to be quite private. We’ve never done the glossy magazines. A tabloid newspaper offered us a sum of money to give us an exclusive. And we respectfully declined. It’s not what we do. You won’t find a picture of our son anywhere on the internet because it’s been quite a deliberate decision." Mark added: "Nor am I going to name him again. If he wants to when he’s old enough - to have a social media profile, that’s up to him. But I’m not going to do it for him."
When panellist Denise Welch asked him straight out if he and Katie were still together, Mark simply showed her his wedding ring as a reply.
© Photo: Getty ImagesMark and wife Katie
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The ITV favourite’s admission comes after it was reported earlier this year Mark and Katie had separated. According to The Sun, their marriage was over following reports Katie had cheated on him with another man. But a spokesperson for Mark insisted at the time that they were not splitting up. They said: "Mark and Katie are not splitting up. Everything is fine between them and they have been at home together this week."
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However, in May, Katie confirmed the couple had separated. She told The Sun: "Mark and I had been talking about separating for some time — we have been drifting for a while. He works away a lot and that’s been hard. A lot of people think it’s the age difference but we don’t see that as the factor."
She added that she had found happiness with a new man, Scott, explaining: "It’s more that we don’t have mutual friends, and our lives are just very different. I met Scott by accident, on a night out, and we just clicked. It wasn’t intentional, it just happened..."
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