Celeb couple Gary Webster and Wendy Turner-Webster once …

Former EastEnders actor Gary Webster – who is married to Stoke-on-Trent born Wendy Turner-Webster ^[1] – has revealed in a podcast how he and his wife were left homeless with debts of £25,000. Gary – who also appeared in Minder in the 1990s – was speaking to Kaye Adams on her How to be 60 podcast.

During the interview, he revealed how he and Wendy – sister of Anthea Turner – struggled to keep up with mortgage payments. The couple are still paying off their debts today, with Gary revealing it has taken years to get themselves into a stable financial position and back on track.

Gary said: “We are stable and we are working and things are getting better, so we are on the way up, which is lovely, but it doesn’t happen overnight. Nobody gets into debt overnight, it’s over a period of time, so if you’ve been struggling for 10 years it will take you about 10 years.”

READ:‘I have to get better and I can’t be with you’ – Robbie Williams’ heartbreaking phone call to wife Ayda ^[2] | Ayda reveals Robbie called time on their relationship in the early days due to his well-documented problems with addiction

READ: Kelvin Fletcher’s wife takes swipe at ITV as Peak District farm show pulled from schedule ^[3] | Kelvin has swapped life on Emmerdale and Strictly Come Dancing to run a 120-acre farm in the shadow of the Roaches, near Leek

Gary is best known for playing Ray Daley in TV’s Minder from 1989 and has also had other roles including in the Chanel 5 soap Family Affairs in 2003. Gary says whilst the money was good, he was still on the backfoot paying off previous debts, reports the Mirror.^[4]

He said: “It was good money, but I was making up for the three or four years previous that I’d got myself into debt and I had to pay off debtors. This was when there were no understanding debt collecting agencies. They were knocking on the door and they would be wanting their money.

“And we lost the house eventually through that, because we couldn’t keep up with the mortgage payments. Anyone who has been through that and worried about the knock on the door or the letter coming on Saturday morning saying you’re going to be cut off on Monday – people don’t do that out of choice, it’s awful.”

Wendy (right) with sister Anthea Turner (Image: Philip Coburn)

Gary, Wendy, 56, and their two children moved into rented accommodation before finding themselves in Travelodge hotels until they could get themselves in a better position. “It wasn’t one thing,” says Gary. “We had film projects that were going to be financed, they collapsed and one thing led to another.

“We were coming out of a rented accommodation and were going to go into another one, but that fell through and then we had a period of time where we were looking every day to see where we would be staying.

“It’s very tough on the children, but we’ve always been open with them and tried to explain that this isn’t because I had been smoking it away or drinking it away, it was just a catastrophic set of circumstances that led us to where we were.”

Gary is best known for his role as as Ray Daley alongside George Cole in Minder (Image: ITV/REX/Shutterstock)

Telling his story to the listeners of the How to be 60 podcast, Gary continued: “I lost my father quite young and there’s a grieving period and then you wake up one day and you begin to smile, you begin to laugh. When I’ve been in debt and it’s heavy and you’re struggling, there is no day that you wake up smiling. You are in grief all the time, there is no good day.

“There was no day I ever woke up when we were travelling from one Travelodge to another that I thought to myself: ‘I’m getting used to this, I can actually function today.’ Every day was a fight, every day was a battle.”

Gary says he is proud that his relationship with Wendy and their children is now as strong as ever. He said: “Hopefully Wendy and I are as strong as ever and our relationships with our children are as strong as ever. That is something that I will be most proud of – that the effects of what we went through didn’t sully our relationships together and they still look upon me hopefully favourably.”

References

^{^} Wendy Turner-Webster (www.stokesentinel.co.uk)
^{^} ‘I have to get better and I can’t be with you’ – Robbie Williams’ heartbreaking phone call to wife Ayda (www.stokesentinel.co.uk)
^{^} Kelvin Fletcher’s wife takes swipe at ITV as Peak District farm show pulled from schedule (www.stokesentinel.co.uk)
^{^} Mirror. (www.mirror.co.uk)
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