Radio presenter Wynne reached his lowest ebb when he split up from his wife, the mother of his two children. Today his life looks happier thanks to new love and better health
Opera singer turned Strictly Come Dancing contestant Wynne Evans was lucky to survive another week in the contest.
Wynne, 52, was in the bottom two last weekend with his professional partner Katya Jones, competing in the dance-off alongside Shayne Ward and Nancy Xu. The judges were split, with Craig Revel-Horwood and Motsi Mabuse saving Shayne and Anton Du Beke opting for Wynne.
Head judge Shirley Ballas had the deciding vote and saved the GoCompare advert star, meaning he survived another week. While the radio presenter’s Strictly experience has been up and down, offscreen he had been very open about reaching rock bottom when his marriage ended.
Wynne contemplated taking his own life after the breakdown of his marriage to Tanwen, the mother of his two children, back in 2016. The star has found love again, with events manager Liz Brookes, 50, spotted cheering him on in the Strictly audience.
During the fourth live show Wynne and Katya hit the headlines when she appeared to awkwardly brush his hand away from her waist, which the couple later put down to an inside joke. “I’m absolutely heartbroken by the things that have been written about me,” said Wynne on his BBC Radio Wales show. “It’s not nice to live in that time but basically Katya and I are really, really close and we’re really good friends and on Saturday night we made a stupid joke.”
Liz made her feelings clear on social media the same night when she shared a sweet snap of them cuddling on the dancefloor, saying she was “so proud of this one tonight”. “Wynne and Liz met at an event and are taking things slow, but he’s excited about where the relationship might go,” a source told The Sun. “He is in a much better place now than when his marriage ended. It’s like night and day — and he is so happy.”
Wynne’s fitness fanatic girlfriend is said to have hugely aided his weight loss, with the star weighing 24 stone at his heaviest. He lost seven stone by giving up bread, burgers and cheese and reducing his alcohol intake.
Exercise came into play too. “One day I started doing a little bit of running – well, walking, actually, at the start,” he said. “Then I slowly lost weight. So when the call came from Strictly I thought: ‘This is the right spot’.”
“It was almost like grief, but you can’t grieve for somebody that’s still there,” said Wynne previously of unhappier times. “So, it really affected my mental health, my confidence and my ego – it totally changed me as a person. I had very dark thoughts and very dark days where I would contemplate all sorts of terrible things.”