Johnny Vegas had fans roaring when he refused to sell his wedding photos to a glossy mag and instead flogged them to Viz magazine for £1 – but it's not exactly been laughter all the way ever since.
Fans will see him make a welcome return to TV on Saturday as the funnyman is joined by by Carol Vorderman, Clara Amfo, Judi Love, Prue Leith and Asim Chaudhry on a special edition of Blankety Blank on BBC. Bradley Walsh hosts as a panel of six celebrities who will help win some brilliant prizes for some lucky contestants.
He's one of the country's most recognisable comedians with a gift for leaving people in hysterics, but it's fair to say Johnny's love life hasn't always been filled with giggles and fun. The telly favourite, who was born Michael Joseph Pennington, has been married twice and is still searching for the special someone.
Johnny Vegas and ex wife Maia Dunphy had plenty of laughs (UK Press via Getty Images)
Kitty Donnelly accused him of cheating after 'finding messages on his phone' (PA)The Benidorm star, who played the short-tempered Oracle on the show, also has two children, one from each of his marriages, who he has kept out of the limelight so far. The 53-year-old's first marriage was to Catherine 'Kitty' Donnelly and the pair got hitched back in August 2002. They first met the then-aspiring interior designer in a West London pub and quickly fell in love. Never to not offer everyone a good giggle, he shunned the glossy mags and sold photos of their wedding to Viz magazine for just £1.
They divorced after splitting up in Christmas 2006 and share a son together, named Michael Pennington Jr, after his dad. But telling MailOnline, first wife Kitty said one day she reached for his mobile phone late one night while her husband was sleeping and found something she wish she didn't.
Actor Johnny Vegas looks dramatically different as he appears on BBC Breakfast
She says she found at "least five" messages that Johnny had sent to a woman called Ursula. "One said something about him kissing her leg in suspenders and was very sexually explicit," Kitty claimed. "He was also going on about her beautiful fair skin. A taxi came within minutes. As he stood at the door he was crying, I was crying. It’s the only time I’ve seen him emotional."
Johnny's second marriage was to Irish TV presenter Maia Dunphy, who is a well-known face on many Irish shows. Maia reached the final of Celebrity Masterchef: Ireland in 2013 and Dancing with the Stars in 2018, has hosted her own shows and documentaries and been a producer.
But the funnyman is still looking for love after a number of relationships (WireImage)
Johnny and Maia previously broke up in 2018 before rekindling their romance later that year (brian mcevoy <picturesinpublicity@gmail.com>)The couple, who tied the knot in her mother's home town of Seville, Spain in 2011, had a son named Tom in 2015 – and Maia wrote a book about her journey into motherhood. At the start of their relationship, Maia explained she wanted success in her own right and was careful not to become 'Mrs Vegas'.
"Once we were together, I was offered reality shows and daytime TV slots in the UK – the kind of breaks people in my line of work might dream of – but they weren’t the breaks I wanted," she told the Sunday Independent’s Living magazine. "I had no interest in suddenly being Mrs Vegas, I worked too hard for that.
"I never traded off him and just kept ploughing my own furrow, but even in Ireland, my ‘more famous husband’ was always the deal-breaker. Fame is a funny, fickle thing and as soon as we became involved, he was the first thing people asked me about. Not just journalists or TV work colleagues, but everyone."
During their relationship, Maia lived with their son in Dublin while Johnny stayed in London. The TV presenter said she was shocked when of close friend offered to change the date of her wedding when she learned that Johnny couldn't make it. "That hurt so much, as she’d never even met him. I’d known her for 25 years and it felt like my coming alone wasn’t enough," said Maia.
In May 2018, the couple announced they had separated the pervious year, with Maia tweeting: "It is with a heavy heart that we want to let you know we separated some time ago last year. We are telling people now because speculation is unhelpful at best, and dangerous at worst.
"As we think is obvious, we continue to fully support each other, there is no acrimony, no story and no one else involved." The pair reconciled in November 2018, but they revealed they had split up for good in April 2020. Admitting it was "devastating" for her, Maia said: "Johnny and I are not together now. It’s difficult and heartbreaking and a source of daily sadness for me.
"It’s something I am deliberately nebulous about because I don’t want it to define Tom [their son] or me, and I don’t want to talk publicly about it. "Like many people in the same situation, I’m just doing my best to get on with life under painful circumstances."
Earlier this year, the star revealed he has recently been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. "A lot of things make sense," he told the BBC. "It's that sense of disorganisation and doing basic tasks. Everybody has an element of it – it's how strong your filter is, I think.
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"When you don't have a filter at all, very simple things become very time consuming. It's like, [I'll say] I'll shift that cup, and then you have 10 other ideas and you haven't shifted that cup, and then three weeks later that cup's still there and somebody's like, why haven't you shifted that, and it's become this monumental task and it's built up.
"It's just, I suppose, how your brain organises itself. I always knew I was disorganised... but it [the diagnosis] helps make sense of a lot of things at school. I'm just on the verge of learning about it."
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