Whenever the birthdays of her personal assistant’s two daughters came round, Lisa Armstrong would buy them lavish presents. She’d do the same at Christmas, too.
It was Lisa’s way of thanking the girls’ mother Anne-Marie Corbett for the work she did looking after her and her husband Ant McPartlin.
She always took great pleasure in picking out the gifts for Poppy and Daisy who are two years apart and were at primary school at the time.
‘Lisa would send Anne-Marie’s girls Christmas and birthday presents every year,’ says a close friend.
Ant McPartlin cradles his new son in a photo on Instagram in which he also displayed his family tree tattoo featuring the names of his wife and her two daughters
‘She enjoyed doing it. She also showered Anne-Marie with presents and even took her on holiday. Lisa and Anne-Marie were really good friends, she was a trusted part of the set-up.
How things have changed. For this is, of course, the very same Anne-Marie who in 2021 married Britain’s Got Talent presenter Ant after his acrimonious divorce from Lisa. And who on Tuesday morning gave birth to Ant’s first child — a boy named Wilder Patrick.
The TV favourite shared the news with his millions of Instagram followers, releasing an arty black-and-white photograph of him cuddling the child in which he showed off a tattoo on his shoulder of a tree with Anne-Marie’s nickname, ‘Amzie’, as well as Poppy and Daisy’s names inked into it. The girls, who are now teenagers and refer to Ant as ‘Dad’, have a younger brother.
Alongside the picture of the newborn, the star wrote on the joint Instagram account he shares with sidekick Declan Donnelly: ‘Welcome to the family,’ adding that the little boy was born at 8.54am on Tuesday.
Ant then wrote: ‘Baby is beautiful, Mummy’s a legend, sisters are over the moon. Dad’s a mess!’
The post must have cut poor Lisa to the quick. Because for her, the birth of little Wilder at the London Clinic was a painful reminder of how she remains childless at the age of 47 — and it devastates her.
As another friend of Lisa’s told me: ‘It is a tragedy. She missed her chance to have a baby and now she has to see Ant flaunting that tattoo on social media. He really didn’t need to do that.
‘It feels like he was rubbing her face in it. You have to remember we are talking about a story of great sadness here, she gave Ant everything and at the end of it all, ended up with an empty crib. It’s utterly heartbreaking.’
Pregnant Anne-Marie Corbett and Ant on a date night in central London last month
To make matters worse, Lisa — the head make-up artist on BBC show Strictly Come Dancing — found out that Anne-Marie was pregnant only after reading about it in the Mail.
For a time she was in denial.
‘Lisa finds it hurtful and heartbreaking that after everything he put her through, Ant didn’t give her the heads-up that he was going to be a dad,’ said the friend.
‘It all feels very insulting. Ant had Lisa’s best years. It feels like the ultimate betrayal. On top of that, you have all of their old pals congratulating Anne-Marie and Ant on social media.’
The good wishes flooded in from showbusiness friends including Davina McCall, This Morning’s Cat Deeley, Britain’s Got Talent judge Alesha Dixon, Jamie Redknapp and many more.
Adding further to the poignancy is the fact that when they were happy together, Ant made no secret of the fact that he and Lisa were desperate to have children and spent years trying to conceive.
Speaking in 2013 — seven years after the couple married — he was remarkably candid on the matter: ‘There’s a rumour that we do everything together and I’m holding off having kids till Dec finds himself Mrs Right.
‘I love that idea, but I’m afraid it’s not true. Lisa and I would love to have kids. We’re trying. It’s tougher than you think when you get a bit older. We’ve been trying for a little while so fingers crossed.’
No matter how many fingers both Lisa and Ant crossed, their dream of becoming parents wasn’t to be, even though they spent 23 years together.
And to add insult to injury, social media trolls started to blame her for being unable to have children. ‘She went through so much trying to have a baby, and then she had to put up with people guessing about her ability to have children,’ says one friend who insists Lisa did not have fertility problems.
Inevitably, it all seemed so different when she started dating Ant back in 1994 when her new beau was just 18.
They met on the music circuit. At the time Lisa was in a band called Deuce, while Ant and Dec were carving out careers as a pop duo known as PJ and Duncan — their characters from the Nineties children’s hit series Byker Grove, in which they first appeared on television.
Despite her impressive career as a make-up artist, Lisa was constantly at Ant’s side supporting him as he went on to become one half of the country’s best-loved entertainment act. The couple married in the summer of 2006 at Cliveden House, near Maidenhead, Berkshire, with Dec acting as best man.
To the outside world they had it all, but as the years went on, it was clear that Ant had serious troubles.
Ant and Lisa Armstrong, pictured in 2015, were childless when they filed for divorce in 2018 after 11 years of marriage
Lisa later found love with former partner James Green. He ended their relationship last year
Both he and Lisa enjoyed boozy nights out at their local pubs in Chiswick, west London, but Ant soon found himself struggling with his demons and became addicted to alcohol.
Lisa was selfless looking after Ant during this period.
She confided to friends that she spent ‘two years of hell’ fighting to keep her ex-husband on the rails as his drinking and an addiction to prescription drugs spiralled out of control.
While his alcoholism was at first kept from the public, in March 2018 Ant was arrested and charged with drink-driving after his Mini collided with two other cars in south-west London while he was twice the legal alcohol limit, after taking his dogs for a walk in nearby Richmond Park.
The presenter was pictured staggering out of the car, looking dishevelled after the collision, and was handed a record-breaking fine of £86,000 at Wimbledon Magistrates’ Court.
Though he had previously sought help for the alcohol abuse, drug addiction and depression, it was the crash and the ensuing publicity that prompted him to go to rehab.
And all the time Lisa was trying to help him. A make-up artist friend of Lisa said: ‘She went through hell. She wasn’t sure if her marriage would survive, but she stood by him to try to save him. It was so hard for her. Ant was in such a bad way she often feared the situation was untenable.’
Friends said she begged the star to seek that professional help and pleaded with him not to leave their £10 million home when he wanted to go out drinking. The friend added: ‘It was a very difficult time for Lisa, it all went on for a while.
‘She could see for years that Ant was down and things were beginning to get difficult for him. She loved him deeply and wanted to get him better.
‘They had been together since they were teenagers, they went through the highs and the lows. Lisa was there, at his side, throughout his super-successful career.’
It goes without saying that Lisa was devastated when she learned that Ant was dating Anne-Marie, who worked for the couple for six years and even organised their tenth wedding anniversary party in 2016.
She’d considered Anne-Marie and her then husband Scott Corbett close friends but rumours of the relationship began in 2018 after Ant had split from Lisa, and the romance was confirmed in June 2018 by Ant’s publicist.
Three years later Anne-Marie and Ant got married in a star-studded ceremony in Heckfield, Hampshire.
Lisa shared a cryptic post on the same day that her ex-husband Ant revealed the happy news that he had become a father
Dec — who has two children, Isla, five, and Jack, one, with his wife Ali Astall — was the best man and Anne-Marie’s daughters were bridesmaids. Guests included Holly Willoughby, Phillip Schofield, Frank Lampard and Eamonn Holmes.
Lisa, meanwhile, has enjoyed her own romances but last August she was heartbroken when her partner, an electrician named James Green, ended their three-year relationship.
She is understood to have been single since.
While Lisa disputes reports that she received a settlement worth £31 million from Ant when they divorced, she did get a substantial sum.
Earlier this week she put their former marital home in west London — which she was given as part of her deal — on the market for £4 million.
Lisa, though, is not into money. ‘She isn’t flash and doesn’t care much for being rich. Besides, what price can you put on motherhood?’ said a friend. ‘Some will say that she did really well out of her divorce.
‘Financially, maybe, but emotionally, it destroyed her.’
And yet Lisa finds herself back in the limelight every time Ant does something in his personal life.
She has confided in friends that she struggles with the attention, and said that when she and Ant split six years ago, she was the second most Googled woman in Britain after Meghan Markle.
Perhaps that is why she decided to jet off on a sunshine break to Portugal yesterday.
Her trip came after an Instagram post on Tuesday — just hours before Ant revealed his news — which explained she is going through ‘silent battles’ which she detailed in a cryptic post.
‘Be proud of how you’ve been handling these last few months,’ it read.
‘The silent battles you’ve fought, the moments you had to humble yourself, the times you’ve wiped your own tears. Celebrate your strength.’
For now, Lisa has her beloved chocolate labrador Hurley to keep a smile on her face.
She and Ant got him after they realised they were not to become parents and they currently share custody of him despite Ant having two more pooches, Milo and Bumble.
‘Lisa loves that dog so much,’ says the friend.
‘If anything is going to keep her going through this difficult time, it’s him.’