Shane Richie's dramatic life off-screen - famous ex-wife, affair, and job regret
Shane Richie has become a firm fan favourite with EastEnders fans over the years for his role as Alfie Moon, but his character is set to be rocked in the coming weeks by a major health diagnosis.
This will be one of the actor's biggest storylines in the BBC soap to date, with Alfie previously being involved in some rather dramatic plots, including a robbery gone wrong and most recently disclosed to Freddie Slater who his real dad was after years of the teen not knowing.
While 59-year-old Richie might not have been involved in such things off-screen, it seems the TV star has had a fair bit of drama in his real life over the years - from being homeless to having a famous ex-wife and cheating.
Alfie is about to be involved in his biggest storyline (BBC/Jack Barnes/Kieron McCarron)Richie was born and raised in London and was part of a youth theatre growing up, beginning his entertaining career early as a bluecoat entertainer at Pontins on the Isle of Wight during his teenage years. However, for 10 days at the age of 16, he was homeless in Plymouth and claims the experience gave him lasting empathy for those living on the streets.
He told The Mirror: "I didn't choose to be homeless, no one does, but unlike others I met in the same predicament I was lucky enough to have options to go to back in London. I slept rough for no more than 10 days before the grim reality kicked in and sent me home with my dirty, unwashed tail firmly between my legs. I soon found out there was nothing adventurous about sleeping in the freezing cold, in a shop doorway or wrapped up in a sleeping bag on a park bench."
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Thankfully, he managed to get back home to London with the help of police and some kind drivers who took pity on a young hitchhiker and he went on to forge his successful career, appearing as a comic on the BBC One show Up to Something! before hosting game shows such as Run the Risk, Win, Lose or Draw, The Shane Richie Experience, and Lucky Numbers.
In the '90s, he went on to appear in numerous musicals and theatre productions including Boogie Nights and Grease, and since then he's gone on to star in numerous other shows as well as having his own music career, releasing a hit single I'm Your Man in 2003 and a country album called A Country Soul in 2017.
His first role in a soap was as the villainous Danny Dexter on Night and Day, before being cast as Alfie Moon in EastEnders, a lighter more humorous role. The actor has also been in numerous other films and programmes, including Flushed Away, Skins, Benidorm, and I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! And while he's likely proud of all this, there is one career move the star regrets despite being paid £500k for it - being the face of washing detergent Daz in the 90s. Richie previously said: "I was given a s**t load of money for that but it shut my career down because casting directors would go, 'We've got that prat who does the Daz ad'. I know what people think of me, I know sometimes they don't take what I do seriously but I do."
During his time in the I'm A Celeb castle, he told his campmates: "Never say no to a job, just price yourself out of it. With Daz I didn't want to do it so I said it would be £500,000 for 21 days work over two years, they're never going to pay that… but they did." But while the ads weren't his cup of tea, he confessed that they did earn him some female fans. The actor added: "They do attract a lot of bored housewives. I get these letters saying, 'Come to my house at 2.30pm. My husband won’t be there and you can check my whites – if you know what I mean'."
Shane and Coleen married in 1990 (TV Times/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
The pair were married until 1999 (Getty Images)And when it comes to the ladies, Richie has had a number of romantic relationships over the years. He first met Loose Women star Coleen Nolan in 1986 and in 1990 they had planned to marry in a huge ceremony, but in the end, they eloped to Florida at the last moment when their plans spiralled out of control. The relationship ended in 1999 with broken hearts after they both played away.
They had two sons, Jake and Shane Jr, and they had a marital blessing at a church when Nolan's father fell ill a few years later. Then in 1996, Shane moved to Manchester to play Danny Zuko in Grease, leaving Nolan and their two children down South. And in an extract from her 2009 autobiography, Nolan said that was when she first had an inkling something was amiss in their marriage.
Attending an after-show party for one of Shane's musicals, her spidey senses started tingling when she spotted an attractive brunette woman across the room. Clad in a 'skin-tight white dress', Nolan said the woman 'just stood out' to her. "It must have been female intuition because that turned out to be the girl Shane had an affair with," she said. In his own autobiography, Rags to Riches, Shane admitted cheating on Nolan with the dancer and actress in question, Claire Taylor. He said: "I was lying so much that I couldn't remember which story I'd told to each of them. And I'd lie to cover up the lies."
A suspicious Nolan tried riffling through Richie's pockets to confirm her suspicions, but her search proved fruitless. Then one day, the proof she needed landed in her lap when she realised Richie's phone calls were being recorded on a computer he had bought for her. "Unbeknown to me, the computer Shane had bought me for Christmas was picking up all the calls to the house," she explained in her autobiography, Upfront and Personal. "When I investigated further, while Shane was abroad, I worked out that there were 33 calls all recorded on the computer's hard drive. Curious, I scanned through them."
One alleged call apparently began with Shane saying, "Hello Princess" - his pet name for Nolan. She breathed a sigh of relief until she heard the next sentence which confused her. According to Nolan, he asked: "'Are you in between shows? What time do you finish? I'll try and come round.'" Recalling her thought process, she continued: "What show? I hadn't been in a show for ages. I could only hear what Shane was saying but there was no way he was talking to me. "'I really miss you,' he continued, in that affectionate tone I knew so well. Caught red-handed!"
Shane and Christine with their family (Instagram)
The couple are still together (Getty Images)In 2012, Nolan told the Daily Star how her divorce from Richie eventually brought her peace. "I'm in a much happier place now than when I was married to Richie – I don't have to worry about what he gets up to anymore," she said. For Shane's part, he told the Guardian there was 'no excuse' for his behaviour, especially as he was the host of a wedding show, Love Me Do, which promoted monogamy. "What I did to Coleen was unforgivable and I could never apologise enough," he said. "And I was pulling the wool over the public's eyes, so what do you think was going to happen?"
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Richie also credited Nolan for keeping things amicable between them. Their divorce was settled out of court and Richie later attended the christening of her third child. However, the betrayal wasn't the first within the marriage - Nolan also admitted that at one point, she played away too. After the birth of their second son, Jake Roche, Nolan said she felt 'unattractive and non-existent' and when Richie started on Grease in 1993, she went to Weymouth with the Nolan Sisters for the summer season. There, she met a keyboard player who made no secret of his interest in her. One day back at the townhouse some of the musicians were renting, the mystery man leaned over and kissed Nolan over a cup of tea. "As I kissed my musician, it was like a sexual awakening," she wrote in her autobiography. "Adrenalin was pumping through my body. I knew what I was doing was terribly wrong, but I was literally shaking with exhilaration. 'I am still attractive', I thought to myself." But the guilt was all-consuming, with Coleen describing it as "one of the most horrendous times of my life."
The couple split in 1999, and Nolan went on to marry musician Ray Fensome and have a daughter Ciara, but they divorced in 2018. Richie married actress Christie Goddard in 2007 in front of EastEnders co-stars including Barbara Windsor and Steve McFadden and the couple have three children - Mackenzie Blue, Lolita Bell, and Romani-Skye Angel Shelley. Goddard first met Richie aged just 12, when she played a celery stick in a Royal Variety show, which Richie had also starred in, but they often share the story of how they met again properly as adults, with Goddard telling the Standard: "I first met him when he was in Jack and the Beanstalk in Wimbledon. I was in Cinderella in Croydon. A friend took me to meet him and there he was all in green tights and a little green suit."
Richie has said of Goddard: "For the first time since Coleen I'd found a relationship that was based on honesty. It was pure. There were no secrets or lies." However, this didn't seem to be the case, as it was claimed in 2011 that Shane "cheated" on Christie for six years with the young president of his fan club, Alison Hall.
Hall was reportedly 22 when they started their relationship and after Richie ended things with her, she claims she told a "tearful" Goddard everything. She also opened up about the affair to the Sunday Mirror, saying: "He seduced me in the spare bedroom when I was working on his website. Like an idiot I went along with him for years. I devoted 17 years of my life to Shane. He knew I would do anything for him and he used me for sex. I was completely besotted and he took advantage of that. It broke my heart. He was my life and when he dropped me I felt like I had nothing to live for."
In 2011, MailOnline reported that a spokesperson for Shane said: "Shane Richie and his wife Christie have been aware of these allegations for some time now and they remain fully united to each other and their family." The couple decided to stay together despite this and remain married to this day.
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