Inside Esther Rantzen’s torrid affairs with Tory MP and best friend’s husband

Dame Esther Rantzen's three-decade marriage to husband Desmond Wilcox was widely regarded as one of the happiest and most successful in showbiz. However, the That's Life legend admitted regret over how their relationship began. The couple met when he was head of the general features department at the BBC, where Esther, now 85, worked. Aside from the complications of dating a colleague, he was also married to her best friend, Patsy, who also worked for the corporation, and the couple had three children, having wed in 1954.

Their clandestine affair lasted eight years, and Esther later told Piers Morgan on his Life Stories show in 2013 that she "deeply regretted" it, despite the ultimately happy outcome. "It was disastrous, and if I had not fallen in love with Desmond, and I tried not to, and we both tried not to. In those eight years, we tried to separate, and we tried not to get together, but the fact was that he dazzled me when we first met…" She said.

However, she added: "When I say I deeply regret what happened, I cannot regret the marriage that we had together and the family we had together because we adored each other." After their affair, which began in 1968, was exposed, Desmond’s position at the BBC became untenable, and he resigned. Things were further complicated when Patsy refused to divorce him, forcing the two to live together instead of marrying.

She only caved in when Esther fell pregnant, and the pair eventually tied the knot in December 1977. They went on to have three children, Miriam, Rebecca and Joshua. However, things remained hostile with Patsy until her death from cancer in 1999. In her autobiography, Esther wrote that Patsy “remained angry and bitter until the day she died” and “took great satisfaction in loathing me to the end”.

The couple would remain together for 30 years until his death in September 2000 from a heart attack. At the time of his death, Esther spoke of how she had spent the "best years" of her life by his side. In the Life Stories chat, she revealed she’ll take his final words with her to the grave. "Desmond’s last words to me were, 'I adore you'. I was sitting on his deathbed.

"I said to my son last night,' If God gave me the choice between ten more years of life and ten more minutes with Desi, I would pick those ten minutes."

Desmond hadn't been Esther's first affair. In 1966, at the age of 26, she had a fling with former Solicitor General for Scotland Sir Nicholas Fairbairn, who died in 1995 aged 61. He was married to the Honourable Elizabeth Mackay since 1962, but began an affair with Esther after they met at the BBC.

She spoke out about their relationship in 2014, expressing her disgust at learning of evidence linking him to a child abuse scandal unfolding at Westminster. At the time, details had emerged suggesting the former Conservative MP for Kinross and Western Perthshire had visited a London guest house where children from care homes were known to have been assaulted by visitors, including senior establishment figures.

"I am horrified and disgusted by these allegations, because Nicky was a friend of mine. I had a brief relationship with him. I always assumed that he was attracted to adult women rather than children," she said.

Dame Esther, who founded Childline, was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2023 and has been campaigning for a change in the law to legalise assisted dying since then.