Gladiators star Vogue has lifted the lid on the iconic show’s 90s heyday and her illicit affair with a hunky male contestant.
Suzie Cox, now 52, appeared on the show’s original run between 1995 and 2000, caught the eye of hopeful and now husband Mark Roberts and despite him having a girlfriend they enjoyed raunchy rendezvous in her hotel during filming.
The couple went on to marry in 1997, the same year Mark reached the competition’s quarter finals, they are now the daughter Amber and son Flynn.
Suzie told The Sun: ‘Obviously we clicked so he had to sort out his previous relationship because he had a girlfriend which wasn’t particularly going that well.
‘Eventually he ended up coming to my hotel room claiming it was because I had air conditioning. We’ve been together 28 years now.’
Suzie also recalled a rather awkward royal run-in with the late Queen Elizabeth II, who was less than impressed after seeing the Gladiator wrestle a female soldier at The Royal Tournament in 1997.
Gladiators star Vogue has lifted the lid on the iconic show’s 90s heyday as she recalled a terrifying stalker ordeal and affair with a hunky contestant (pictured 1998)
Suzie Cox, now 52, who joined the show in 1995, caught the eye of hopeful and now husband Mark Roberts, who despite having a girlfriend, enjoyed raunchy meetings in her hotel room
Suzie said: ‘Obviously we clicked so he had to sort out his previous relationship because he had a girlfriend which wasn’t particularly going that well’
‘[The Queen] shook my hand and said, “Ooh, it’s not very lady like is it, what you’ve been doing?” And I sort of nodded and smiled’.
However Suzie claimed the late Prince Phillip ‘very excited’ to meet the spandex clad female athletes.
It comes after the ex-wife Gladitaors star Jet revealed how their fairytale marriage was destroyed by a string of explosive rows in which she claims to have been repeatedly taunted, threatened and even physically attacked.
Teacher Zoe Gilbert wed Jet – real name Diane Youdale – after she proposed just four months into a whirlwind romance which began when they met in a Tesco car park.
But their romantic marriage soured within weeks – and MailOnline revealed last month how Youdale, 54, had admitted attacking Zoe, claiming she had ‘snapped’ after she was ‘pushed over the edge.’
Police were called to the home they had shared in Stockton-on Tees, County Durham, and Diane was spoken to, though not arrested – but the flare up was to prove the final straw for the couple who soon afterwards separated permanently.
Now Zoe, 50, has broken her silence to make a series of sensational claims about Diane – telling how the marriage was a ‘living nightmare’ which soon turned violent with the gameshow pin-up repeatedly attacking her while drunk, pushing her downstairs and opening a door in her face and warning: ‘I will rip you limb from limb.’
The abuse, she says, was so vile she was routinely called names like ‘fat little c*** of a dwarf’.
‘Eventually he ended up coming to my hotel room claiming it was because I had air conditioning. We’ve been together 28 years now’ (Mark pictured on the show)
The couple went on to marry in 1997, the same year Mark reached the competition’s quarter finals, they are now the daughter Amber and son Flynn
Suzie also recalled an awkward royal run-in with the late Queen Elizabeth II, who was less than impressed after seeing the Gladiator wrestle a female soldier at The Royal Tournament in 1997
Diane meanwhile has bitterly denied the claims against her – saying that she is teetotal, and has a back condition that makes her too frail to be violent. And she made the counter accusation that her ex-wife Zoe was herself frequently drunk and had invented her claims.
In support of her version of events Zoe took photographs of injuries which she has shared with MailOnline.
Zoe said: ‘I suffered numerous assaults from Diane, she’s still a strong and fit woman and I was terrified of her by the time our marriage came to an end.’
She said that when she showed her photographs to her horrified family they feared that 4ft 9in Zoe might be at risk if she didn’t end the relationship.
Zoe claims one particularly toxic row resulted in her plunging down the stairs at home and slamming her head into the wall at the bottom so hard it broke the plaster.
She also alleged that she suffered a cut above the eye after being struck by a door opened by Diane and was also forcefully pushed into a wall by her.
The marriage finally ended in February last year when a final drunken argument suddenly turned sinister and Zoe was forced to run from the marital home to seek help from a neighbour, she says.
She told MailOnline how Diane screamed: ‘I will rip you limb from limb, I will kill you.’
Diane has previously admitted she was taken away by the police that night, saying: ‘She (Zoe) fell over the back of the sofa. I pressed on her chest three times firmly and I said, ‘stop this now.’ I can’t remember what happened then. The next thing I knew I was being led out by the police.’
It comes after the ex-wife Gladitaors star Jet revealed how their fairytale marriage was destroyed by a string of explosive rows in which she claims to have been repeatedly taunted
Zoe said that when she showed the photographs of her injuries to her horrified family they feared that 4ft 9in Zoe might be at risk if she didn’t end the relationship
Diane pictured as iconic Jet on Gladiators in 1995
Zoe tells a very different version of events.
Choking back tears at times as she recalled painful memories from a marriage that effectively lasted only seven months, she said: ‘The ironic thing is that on that night, our final night living under the same roof, Diane didn’t lay hands on me, but she had several times before.
‘On that night I didn’t fall over the back of the sofa. How can anyone fall over the back of the sofa unless they’re sitting on top of it? Which I obviously wasn’t.
‘She had been drinking heavily and had flown into a rage, which was quite common, but this time I was really scared.
‘I was standing on the porch, too frightened to go near her, when she told me: ‘I am going to rip you limb from limb, I will kill you.’
‘It was terrifying and I knew that if I didn’t get out of the house I was in serious danger, I had no choice but to go outside and ask for help. I was shouting ‘help, please, somebody help’ and thankfully my neighbour heard me.
‘He called the police and Diane was taken away and kept in the cells. She was only released to come back to the house and collect her things.
‘I loved her, we had some great times together and I wanted our marriage – my first – to work, but I knew at that point it was over, there was no coming back from it.’
She added: ‘I was lied to and gaslighted by Diane to such an extent that I didn’t know any more what was real, it was like living with a stranger and I wonder now if I really knew her at all.’
