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Daytime telly star Fern Britton is happy and single living by the sea in Cornwall and enjoying life entirely on her own terms.

The 66-year-old former Ready, Steady, Cook and This Morning presenter split up with her husband of 20 years, television chef Phil Vickery, in 2020 and is fully embracing her new status as a single woman.

While she says the door to a new relationship is "half" open, she isn't ready to share all of herself with a new man quite yet and certainly won't settle down for just anyone.

"I don’t want anything much at all – just somebody who’s there. That would be lovely," she said.

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Daytime TV legend Fern Britton says she is in the best place ever as she focuses on learning who she is without her ex-husband and children by her side.

Fern, 66, has opened up about moving on from her 20-year marriage to This Morning chef Phil Vickery, and finally living
life on her own terms.

She says a “whole other world has opened up” now that her grown-up children have left home and she’s a relaxed single woman again.

And while she doesn’t totally rule out finding love in the future, she has no plans to return to This Morning, which she presented for a decade from 1999.

“I don’t think I’d be able to turn the clock back, it wouldn’t work that way,” she told Good Housekeeping magazine. “My time at This Morning was marvellous and I adored the 10 years I was there, but I feel you should never look back.”

Fern began dating cook Phil, 62, a year after separating from her first husband, telly executive Clive Jones.

At the time she was a mum-of-three – sharing Grace, now 26, and twins Jack and Harry, 29, with Clive – and speaking in 2016, Fern said she didn’t think anyone would want a “40-something woman with three kids”, before a work colleague told her Phil fancied her.

Their whirlwind romance led to a spring wedding the following year, and they welcomed daughter Winnie, now 21, 18 months later.

In their happier times, Fern and Phil were seen as one of morning television’s golden couples and kept This Morning viewers entertained with their intimate on-air jokes and banter.

But in January 2020 they announced their break-up after “20 happy years together”, releasing almost identical statements saying they would “always share a great friendship and our lovely children”.

Last year Phil was rumoured to be seeing an old friend of Fern’s, Lorraine Stanton, after they were spotted kissing on a London street, reportedly following a date. The pair denied being romantically involved, saying they were just friends, and Fern kept a dignified silence.

Despite previously saying she didn’t want to be the “poster girl for separation”, Fern has turned her life into something that could be straight from the pages of one of the cosy holiday novels she’s written. It’s full of wonderful things, she says, including “good friends who say ‘let’s have a Cosmo’, and then we get smashed! It’s all going on and I love it”.

These days, she lives alone by the sea in Cornwall – Winnie has just left home – and spends her spare time walking, working out, going to church and singing in a local choir.

Despite slowing down the pace since leaving This Morning, Fern has kept herself busy. She co-presented three series of All Star Mr & Mrs with Phillip Schofield, who left This Morning recently following his admission of an affair with a younger colleague.

In 2009, she began fronting her own show, Fern Britton Meets… interviewing everyone from then Prime Minister Tony Blair to opera singer Katherine Jenkins.

She also took part in Strictly Come Dancing in 2012, partnering with Artem Chigvintsev before they were the fifth pair to be eliminated.

More recently she’s become a best-selling author, and has written several books set in Cornwall that have proved a hit.

Speaking about her hectic early career, Fern says, “I had all these years when the children were young with a big job and very little sleep. I was money-rich but time-poor, and it’s lovely to have time now.”

She says she’s now happier than ever, but it’s taken her a long time to get there and it wasn’t easy following her marriage split.

“And suddenly, when it’s done and dusted, you have to take a look around and think, ‘What makes me happy?’” she said.
“It might be doing 10,000 steps a day or a cup of tea and Coronation Street.”

It’s about the little things, she says, and then life just gets “happier and happier”.

The door to a new relationship is “half” open, Fern says, but she refuses to settle for someone who bores her, and rules out getting married again – or letting anyone see her naked!

While she’s happy to accept her “droopy” bum and her boobs landing by her knees as it means she’s still around to see it, she’s not prepared to share that side of herself any more, joking that nobody’s going to see her “undressed again”!

The most important things she’d look for in a partner, she says, are kindness, intelligence and humour, and someone who can hold
a good conversation.

She adds, “I don’t want anything much at all – just somebody who’s there. That would be lovely.”

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