There was hardly a dry eye in the house when it was revealed that Ant McPartlin ‘made a desperate dash’ from the launch of Britain’s Got Talent to be beside his beloved dog Hurley as the chocolate labrador departed this world, aged 12. The vet had said Hurley was ‘too ill to recover’ and was put to sleep in Ant’s loving arms.
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'Poor Ant,' millions of us dog lovers thought. 'Poor old Hurley, how sad to see the adorable mutt pass on to higher realms.'
What we did not know at the time of Ant’s dash, but has since been revealed by my colleague Katie Hind, was that beside him at Hurley’s deathbed was his ex-wife Lisa Armstrong, a woman he had not seen face to face since their divorce eight years ago.
She, too, was grieving and saying farewell to the beloved dog they bought together as a puppy when they were married.
As friends say poignantly, Hurley was the baby Lisa never had. She is more than bereft.
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Yet it was all about Ant’s pain, his loss, which will no doubt endear him to his millions of followers on BGT and I’m A Celebrity. And boost his estimated £62million fortune yet further.
Ant McPartlin and his wife Anne-Marie Corbett walking Hurley and their two maltipoos
Lisa Armstrong pictured with Ant and Hurley in a photo she posted on Instagram during their marriage
Call me cynical, but it seems that even in death, Hurley was a pawn in Ant’s PR machine.
Wasn’t the release of information about Ant’s deathbed dash at the very time he’s promoting the next series of BGT – with its now dwindling audience – just a little too coincidental?
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And why was there no mention of the fact that Lisa was there too for Hurley’s final moments?
It is well documented, even by Ant, that he and Lisa were desperately trying to have a baby and that when it didn’t happen they got Hurley, a substitute for the child they couldn’t conceive.
Today, now that we know what was to come, the pictures of Lisa with the puppy are utterly heart-wrenching.
During their acrimonious divorce – and after Ant had gone off with her close friend and personal assistant Anne-Marie Corbett, to whom he is now married – it emerged that Lisa’s dearest wish after 12 years of marriage was to have sole custody of Hurley.
She got to keep the former matrimonial home and received a multi-million-pound settlement, but Ant told his lawyers: ‘She can have anything she wants, except the dog.’
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Why did he deny her sole custody? Yes, he clearly loved Hurley, his comfort dog who was allowed to visit him in rehab when he was drying out from his multiple addictions. And yet after what he had done to Lisa, and all that had happened between them, it just seems so mean.
The lad we all thought was a fun-filled cheeky chappy is perhaps not as nice as we were all led to think.
He and Lisa met in 1994, when he was 18, she 17 and in a band called Deuce. Ant was carving out a career with his best mate Declan Donnelly, the two of them establishing the phenomenally successful Ant and Dec combo that thrives to this day.
They married in 2006 and Lisa stood by him during the years in which he was suffering from depression, and when his alcoholism and addiction to prescription drugs spiralled out of control.
She was the one who picked up the mess he had become, who saw him in and out of rehab, only for him to announce in 2018 in a solo statement that he was leaving Lisa.
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And then he hooked up with their PA Anne-Marie, whom Lisa trusted and loved as a friend.
Lisa with her beloved labrador Hurley. After their split, Ant had insisted on joint custody, a 50/50 timeshare
Anne-Marie Corbett and Ant McPartlin at Wimbledon in 2021, ahead of their marriage that summer. The pair went on to have the family that Lisa and Ant had always longed for, writes Amanda
Can you imagine how heartbroken Lisa must have felt as Ant and Anne-Marie dated, then married, going on to have the family he and she had always longed for, with Anne-Marie’s two daughters as well as a son they had together?
What can Lisa have felt as she saw pictures of the happy family together, of Anne-Marie and Ant holding hands and walking their two dogs, a pair of adorable maltipoos they had acquired?
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Hurley was often with them, too. Ant had insisted on joint custody, a 50/50 timeshare.
What kind of man does that? After all, he’d got the new wife, the stepdaughters, a son, the maltipoos. Why could he not give way on Hurley, whom Lisa considered to be her family?
Which rather comes to the heart – or heartlessness – of Ant McPartlin. It is not uncommon, when married couples divorce, for the children to be passed between them, one week on, one week off, as Hurley was.
But children are your own flesh and blood.
And the difference is that you can explain to a child why they now have two homes, two sets of parents, why their lives are often despairingly and confusingly split. You can’t explain that to a dog. Would it really have cost Ant so much, as he began his new life, to have let his ex keep the dog she so dearly loved?
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