Violence, Viagra and the truth about the war of the Tarrants
Heavens, what a stench! Is it fish bait? Obscene amounts of money? Or just the not-so-sweet smell of a decomposing marriage?
Whatever, it makes bystanders gag. Chris Tarrant must always have known that cheating on your wife can be a messy business, but even he can’t have been prepared for this.
Last September, as “discussions” about his imminent divorce settlement got under way, he learned that his ex-wife Ingrid - furious to discover that he had been cheating on her for half their marriage - wanted 30 per cent of his estimated £34 million fortune.
Ouch, perhaps - but it could have been worse. By rights, Ingrid could have demanded 50 per cent and argued her case in court.
Still, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire host Tarrant - notoriously canny with his own money - was irked. He said 20 per cent was his final answer, so to speak.
Ingrid was incandescent - and the fighting between them has grown bloodier with each passing day.
Indeed, Chris Tarrant must be asking himself why he didn’t just open his wallet and give his ex the lot.
First, there was mutual sniping, conducted through the gossip pages, about exactly who was responsible for the marriage break-up.
Ingrid told “friends” she was distraught and in despair over her husband’s shenanigans with Fiona McKechnie, a charity organiser.
Chris confided - to more “friends” - that he felt he had been pushed into a meaningless fling with another woman (albeit a fling that lasted seven years) because his own wife had withheld sex.
There was much public bickering over money, with Tarrant’s aides claiming Ingrid was simply greedy.
What did she want with a huge mansion, they asked, when it was just her and her youngest son? Tarrant, just as predictably, was painted as a skinflint.
But yesterday the stakes were upped - rather spectacularly, it has to be said.
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In a interview splashed over the pages of a downmarket tabloid, Ingrid let rip, accusing her ex of physically attacking her, and of him being habitually cruel during their 15-year marriage.
She poured scorn on her husband’s love-making skills, claiming that he was “clumsy and na’ve in bed” and had relied on Viagra for four years because he “couldn’t get it up”.
She went into excruciating detail about Tarrant’s sexual problems, revealing that he had suffered a groin injury some years before while “larking around” with their son Toby.
She described how, a year or so later, Tarrant started having problems getting an erection, and claimed that Toby had damaged his manhood.
Sex was off the menu for some six months and a minor operation was eventually carried out.
But Ingrid believes he was psychologically scarred by the experience.
“My husband has always had a kind of mythical belief in his own sexuality,” she said.
“He prides himself on his manhood and loves to think of himself as a legend in his own trouser legs.
“But the truth is that I didn’t go off sex. He did.”
There was a time, conceded Ingrid, that she herself could not have full sex because of an ovary problem.
She made sure she satisfied her husband, however - and again doesn’t mind telling the world about the lengths to which she went to do so when on occasion he clearly disgusted her.
“I did understand that Chris, like all men, needed the physical release.
“So I always tried to satisfy him in every way I could, even when I found myself repulsed by him.”
When she found a packet of Viagra in the bin, Ingrid at first thought it must belong to her son Dexter.