Danny Dyers Stunning Transformation Revealed!

Any visitor to ’s Essex mansion will tell you who wears the trousers. And no, it isn’t the Rivals star. Guests are stunned at just how much the self-styled ‘cockney geezer’ is bossed around by his long-suffering wife, Jo Mas.

‘She has him doing the washing up,’ says one friend. ‘She makes him get the Hoover out, and there is no way she picks up the dog muck, that’s his job. He does as he is told... Jo cracks the whip.’

Indeed, for Danny, the standout star of the Disney+ television adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s best-selling ‘Rutshire Chronicles’ novels, it has been quite the learning curve – because for almost two decades, he put Jo through the wringer.

For a time, he faced financial ruin (bailiffs came knocking at the door) and he was plagued by accusations of cheating and of drinking heavily in London’s trendiest nightclubs.

Friends say Jo, his childhood sweetheart, who he began dating when they were both 13, was ‘constantly throwing him out’ because of his wastrel ways, despairing of the ‘hardman’ image he lived up to by throwing wild parties that would often leave him ‘out of it’ for days.

She was said to be devastated when it emerged he’d had a six-week fling with the late singer in 2012 and friends were surprised when Jo took him back.

But thank goodness she did. For today, Danny, 48, is a new man following a total transformation – both personally and professionally – which has rather turned him into a pin-up for middle-class women across Britain.

Even the much-aired advert for gambling firm Paddy Power, in which he appears topless while sitting outside a pub with a pint in his hand, doesn’t appear to be putting off his new fanbase.

Once the star of gritty movies that could barely get a showing in the cinema, today Danny is adored for playing lovable millionaire Freddie Jones in Rivals – a self-made working class-hero with a monstrous wife, who .

Viewers are smitten with his down-to-earth and sensitive manner, which contrasts sharply with lovely Lizzie’s vain and arrogant TV presenter husband James, played by Oliver Chris, who takes his wife for granted and is horribly dismissive of her.

It’s also a far cry from Danny’s role in EastEnders playing hardman Mick Carter, landlord of Albert Square’s Queen Vic, a role which he him win three National Television Awards.

‘Danny was seen as a total liability this time 15 years ago,’ says a television insider. 'He was a bit of a mess, he was a good actor but he wasn’t top of the list to be hired by almost anyone. EastEnders took a bit of a gamble and it paid off, the viewers loved him and so did his colleagues, but he still knew how to party back then.’

Danny is no doubt indebted to the producers of Rivals for .

But friends insist he has Jo to thank for his evolution from tough guy to mid-life sex symbol – a status he is ‘rather enjoying’.

The couple finally married in September 2016 in a lavish ceremony at the luxury Chewton Glen Hotel in New Milton, in the New Forest in Hampshire.

Jo has loyally stuck by him throughout his problems – and was there for him when he returned from rehab in Cape Town in 2017 after he checked in for addiction issues.

‘Jo loves him but she is harsh with him,’ says a friend of the couple.

‘She would regularly throw him out, and they have split up before, and Danny always knows if he puts a step wrong it would happen again.

‘But she has been enormously supportive and has been such an important part of the new phase of his life. He’s soppy, she’s tough and that has been the key. She’s so strict these days.

‘Jo has made many sacrifices for Danny, she has given him the life that he could only have dreamt of 15 years ago.’

Friends also tell me that Jo has grown tired of his ‘bad’ friends and gave him an ultimatum that if he didn’t ditch them, she would dump him. One said: ‘She absolutely meant it, too. She would have got rid of him if he continued to hang around with them.’

The actor is said to be full of regrets about his past behaviour.

He and Jo also have a nine-year-old son, Arty, and Danny has made a huge effort to be a good dad to him to make up for the lost years.

‘Danny feels he has really hurt his family at times,’ says a friend of the star. ‘He knows he has let them down, and this new way for him is about making it up to them. He wants to do them proud.

‘Jo, Dani and Sunnie have all suffered but it’s very sad for Dani in particular. When she was little, her dad was not around so much for her.

‘Danny knows that she remembers some of that but today he couldn’t be a more supportive father.

‘If he gets an invitation for a night out nowadays, he wants to take Dani and Sunnie. He has gone full circle, he’s like the ideal husband and dad these days.

‘And that’s really important to him. He’s a changed man. The cheating has stopped, as has the boozing.

‘Thanks to Jo and the girls, he has learned his lessons, looked over his past behaviour and has vowed to be a better person.’ Danny is a doting grandfather to Dani’s three children, a son named Santiago, five, from her relationship with ex-trader Sammy Kimmence (who was convicted of fraud and jailed) and identical twin daughters , with West Ham footballer Jarrod Bowen – who Danny is also smitten with.

Jilly Cooper fans might have winced a little, however, when he was seen live on television last month – with one of his grandchildren in his arms and Jo at his side – singing an X-rated football chant from the stands at West Ham United’s London Stadium during their FA Cup clash against Leeds United.