Jane McDonald has spoken openly about never having children in the past. The singer and actress, who is delighting viewers on Channel 5's Cruising with Jane McDonald, was previously married to her manager Henrik Brixen for five years. She then began a relationship with her teenage sweetheart, Eddie Rothe, and the pair have been together since 2008.
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In her 2019 autobiography Riding The Waves: My Story, Jane touched upon her and Henrik's conversation around starting a family. She wrote: "Henrik and I once talked about having children but there wasn't room for babies in his plans for me. I began to feel lonely in my marriage."
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Henrik worked as a plumbing engineer on a ship when the couple met, but he went on to become Jane's manager after they married in 1998.
"Your manager is your boss and tells you what to do, what to wear and who to be, so our relationship changed," Jane wrote. "I loved him with all my heart, but felt he'd stopped looking at me as a wife. I became a product."
Jane with her ex-husband Henrik Brixen
She continued: "I lost confidence and became introverted. Eventually, I came to the devastating conclusion that I really did have nothing left. I told Henrik, 'I'm firing you as my manager.'"
MORE: Jane McDonald reveals husband left her to save her career
Jane, 57, split from Henrik in 2003 and reconnected with her teenage boyfriend Eddie, a former drummer with the 1960s band The Searchers. She admitted to The Mirror that Henrik walked out of their marriage to save her career, saying: "Henrik tried his very, very best and he was brilliant at what he did, but he didn't know the industry.
Jane McDonald's autobiography, from £3.99, Amazon
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"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."
Jane reconnected with her teenage boyfriend Eddie Rothe
The TV star, whose credits include Loose Women, Jane & Friends and The Cruise, also spoke about her decision not to have children in 2013. "For me, it was an easy decision to not have children, because I knew I couldn't do both," she told Echo News.
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