Trinny and Susannah's painful 'divorce' after humiliating fail sparked rift
Back in the Noughties before the age of Instagram and Tik Tok, if you wanted fashion advice then Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine were the ones to listen to.
The brusque but compassionate hosts of the BBC's What Not To Wear made a name for themselves grabbing women's boobs and telling them how to dress to flatter their shape.
It was an overnight hit and set the women on the path to international stardom. At their peak, the duo appeared on everything from The Oprah Winfrey Show to the Oscars red carpet.
And their friendship was as genuine as their straight-talking advice.
Susannah Constantine and Trinny Woodall were the fashion gurus of the early Noughties (Press Association)Having worked together since the mid-90s, when they started out with a weekly style column for the Daily Telegraph, the duo shared a deep bond, supporting each other through addiction, IVF and a series of heartbreaking miscarriages.
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Trinny - who turns 59 today - was introduced to Susannah by a mutual friend in 1994, four years after she managed to get clean following a decade of drink and drug abuse.
"I'm Trinny, I'm an alcoholic and I'm an addict," Trinny bravely announced at the Spectator's addiction debate in 2013, revealing how she started using cocaine as a shy, acne-riddled 16 year old after moving to London because she wanted 'to be cool'.
At 21 she overdosed, went to rehab and started going to meetings, but three months later she relapsed.
Trinny and Susannah became household names thanks to BBC show What Not To Wear (BBC)
The pair were regulars on the red carpet and were even invited to the Oscars (Getty Images)"Someone in the meeting came up to me and said, 'You haven't had enough. You need to go out and have a real rock bottom.' So then I used for another five years," she previously told the Independent.
She started drinking a bottle of vodka a night, along with cocaine and pills. And every time, she swore it would be her last.
It was during a two-day bender with three friends at a house in London that the group made a pact to get sober - and for once, Trinny stuck to it.
The other three members of that group would end up dead. Her best friend Katy managed to get clean but died from HIV-related pneumonia and the two others suffered accidental overdoses, one while working as a journalist in Peshawar.
As part of her recovery, Trinny spent seven months in rehab followed by a further six in a halfway house.
Trinny battled a serious drug addiction before finding fame (Mirrorpix)
She managed to get clean after hitting 'rock bottom' (Getty Images)Trinny remains sober and still attends meetings as part of her commitment to her recovery.
And the struggle is something that her best friend Susannah, 60, can relate to. She also went public with her demons, admitting she's an alcoholic who has been sober for the last nine years.
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"It's not something I've spoken about before really, but it's important. I'm in recovery, so I'm an alcoholic," she told podcast My Mate Bought A Toaster.
And the star, who has three children Joe, 23, Esme, 21 and Cece, 18, with businessman husband Sten Bertelsen, admitted her issues had caused friction in the marriage.
"As an addict, I would get all my own defects and find someone else to attach them to. And so I thought my husband was passive-aggressive, but actually I was the one," she said.
"I was the angry passive-aggressive and my poor husband had to live with it."
Trinny, however, gave Susannah the tough love she needed, telling the Sunday Telegraph: "I'm the blunt friend, the one who will say, 'What the f*** is going on, because you really don't look great?' Maybe it's too blunt, but at least I get to the point."
As well as a shared struggle, Susannah was a constant comfort to Trinny when she suffered two miscarriages and nine rounds of IVF before welcoming daughter Lyla, 19.
But in 2007 they were ripped apart by a catastrophic response to their ITV show Undress the Nation.
The programme came under fire because of the amount of nudity it featured before 9pm. And the backlash was so fierce that it drove Trinny and Susannah to 'divorce', leaving both distraught.
While they will never work together on TV again, the pair are still firm friends (trinnywoodall/Instagram)"We'd been Trinny and Susannah for so many years. I'd walk through an airport and get recognised, but people wouldn't say, 'Oh look there's Susanna' they'd go, 'Oh look there's Trinny and Susannah,'" Susannah previously told ITV's Loose Women.
"Suddenly I didn't have my other half and so I had to re-identify myself as a single person, as just Susannah. And I found that very difficult. It was almost like I went into mourning.
"I lost all my confidence, I put on weight, my self worth was on the floor."
Trinny branched out with her successful makeup line, Trinny London, while Susannah released her first novel, After the Snow, in 2017, and penned a memoir titled Ready For Absolutely Nothing.
And while they're 'still best friends' to this day, Susannah has made it clear that they will never work together again.
"That show was the death of our career because it was crass and not done with the empathy that had made us successful," she continued.
"We won't work together again, but we speak all the time. We're opposites in every way but we have an incredible bond."
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