BAFTA-winning presenter Claudia Winkleman has been on our screens since the early 1990s, and married her husband Kris Thykier shortly after the turn of the millennium.
Best known as the co-presenter of Strictly Come Dancing, her popularity has soared in recent years following the launch of BBC One reality show The Traitors and Channel 4’s The Piano, the final of which is on tonight (May 25).
The official lineup of Celebrity Traitors’ first series is out now. It features some of the most colossal names in contemporary British TV, including Stephen Fry, Alan Carr and Jonathan Ross.
Her least favourite presenting gig was on the Channel 4 comedy panel show King Of, of which even her parents didn’t approve. Can’t win ’em all, hey Claud?
Claudia Winkleman’s biggest turn-off with husband Kris
The superstar TV presenter appeared on the Off Menu podcast with Ed Gamble and James Acaster in 2020, and the atmosphere of jovial bonhomie loosened her tongue.
Each episode, Ed and James ask their guest whether they would serve still or sparkling water at their dream restaurant. What came next took them by surprise.
I won’t have it.
“I don’t like or believe in water, I won’t have it,” she said. “If you’re walking towards my table and there’s a water glass, it’s a solid ‘no’. I’ve never knowingly had water,” she joked. “I don’t like it. I won’t have it around.
“My husband drinks great amounts of water and I really like him but it’s problematic. He’s glugging. Don’t touch me,” she said. “‘Claud, take your bra off.’ I don’t think so – you should be ashamed of yourself.”
She wants a ‘dry shrivelled up little man’
Claudia continued with a scenario.
“Imagine you’re on a date – I’ve been with the same man for 100 years. He’s sitting there and he’s like: ‘I don’t know what to have, what are you going to have? Maybe we should have the same thing.’
“And someone comes round and says: ‘Would you like some water? And he goes: ‘Yeah, sure.’
“They give him a pint glass of water and he drinks the whole thing. Are you going to want to kiss this many any more? No. A wet mouth with a big fleshy tongue that is covered in liquid.”
There’s nothing worse…
“I want a dry shrivelled up little man,” she joked. “I want to sleep with Mr Burns. He doesn’t drink water, I want him at the table,” she said. “I just don’t like liquid, I don’t like wine, there’s all kinds of stuff. Is this too weird?”
For Ed and James, no. Nothing is too weird.
Claudia and Kris married at the same venue as Sean Bean and Antonio Banderas
And Paul McCartney. And Liam Gallagher.
Old Marylebone Town Hall has staged more celebrity weddings than Claudia Winkleman has had hot dinners. More than anywhere else in the UK, according to the Standard.
It closed for renovation in 2013 and, £60 million and four years later, was back in business.
Paul McCartney married Linda Eastman there in 1969. He also married Nancy Shevell there in 2011. Ringo Starr and his second wife Barbara Bach celebrated their nuptials there in 1981.
Sir Paul isn’t the only celeb to have graced its walkways twice. Liam Gallagher walked down the aisle with Patsy Kensit there in 1997, and with Nicole Appleton in 2008.
Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas, Sean Bean and Georgina Sutcliffe, Cilla Black and Bobby Willis, and… Claudia Winkleman and Kris Thykier.
Just over a decade after they tied the knot, Claudia revealed that Kris had “banned” her from having any more children.
“It is probably a good thing as otherwise I would have nine more,” she said at the time, per the Telegraph. The couple have three children: Jake, Matilda, and Arthur.
The final of The Piano is on tonight (May 25) at 9pm on Channel 4.
Read more: ‘Livid’ Claudia Winkleman on backlash over replacing Jonathan Ross on BBC show
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