Patrick Kielty has revealed he refused to ask Cat Deeley for advice during their 12-year marriage because it was a sign of ‘weakness’.
The Irish comedian, 54, and Cat, 48, announced their split this week, revealing they had taken the decision to end their marriage and stressing that ‘no other party’ was involved.
While the announcement came as a shock to many fans, Patrick gave an insight into some imbalances in their relationship during an appearance on The Mid-Point podcast in July 2023.
During the chat, host Gabby Logan probed the presenter about whether there was any competitiveness between the pair, who met when they co-hosted Fame Academy.
While Patrick insisted this wasn’t the case, he confessed that he didn’t feel comfortable asking Cat for guidance when it came to his career.
Asked whether Cat ever gave him good advice, he replied: ‘That’s a real sign of weakness. You’ve got to be absolutely buckled before you ask for advice in our house [laughs].’
Patrick Kielty once revealed he refused to ask Cat Deeley for advice during their 12-year marriage because it was a sign of ‘weakness’ (pictured in 2023)
Patrick then admitted that Cat’s industry knowledge dwarfed his own, but he would pretend to have all the answers.
He mused: ‘What’s interesting being married to someone who has navigated her way through television here, but [also] television somewhere else, there’s an experience there about how stuff ends up working out and how deals get done and how deals don’t get done and different things.
‘I know that she’s got that superpower in terms of, she just knows stuff, and so I kind of still sometimes don’t, but pretend that I do.
I probably should, I should go, “I’m not sure about this, what do you think?”
‘Whereas you just plough on making the same mistakes again and having an eye roll in the kitchen, when you’re explaining, how did that go wrong? “Well, I’ll tell you, now you’ve asked.”’
Elsewhere in the chat, Patrick admitted he felt like a ‘junior shareholder’ in their marriage.
Asked how he and Cat made decisions in their marriage, he said: ‘For a long time I genuinely thought I was in a 50/50 partnership [laughs].
‘Then you realise you’re actually a junior shareholder in a 50/50 partnership.You go, “I thought we were 50/50? Why do you seem to have more shares?”
‘I think with big decisions you kind of have to float stuff and see how that’s going to go. You know, drop that into conversation.’
The comedian, 54, and Cat, 48, met when they hosted Fame Academy (pictured) but while he claimed Cat’s industry knowledge dwarfed his own, he would pretend to have all the answers
Patrick was also asked if, at the time, he and Cat were the happiest they’d ever been.
‘Yeah, look, you know 10 years into marriage, it is something you work at,’ he said. ‘It’s that idea that what attracts you is not going to keep you together.
‘It’s that idea of how you work together whenever the rough and the smooth and all those things … it’s a journey.
‘You put those kids into the mix and suddenly those priorities change, and all of those things.
‘I think anybody who feels they can put their feet up and go, “Yeah, that’s marriage cracked,” you’re kind of going, “Really?”‘
He then touched on the couple’s decision to leave Los Angeles and move back to London in 2020 after a decade living in California.
The return to the UK was, he said, Cat’s decision. She had risen to fame on SMTV and later presented Fame Academy for the BBC, which is how they met.
Then she moved to LA and had a long-running job on the show So You Think You Can Dance.
Elsewhere in the chat, Patrick admitted he felt like a ‘junior shareholder’ in their marriage (pictured in 2021)
He said: ‘I think with big decisions, like that, you kind of have to float stuff and see how that’s gonna go.
‘What was weird about it was, it was Cat who wanted to do return it was more her decision because I think being a young mum and not having the family around and not having that network of cousins and brothers and all of that.
‘I think for me, somewhere like London is not home, London’s never really going to be home for me, in my head I still live in a little village in County Down, even though I haven’t lived there full time for 30 years.
‘My family was always a flight away anyway so that idea of it being a longer flight from LA wasn’t as much of a problem for me as someone who had to get on a flight to see them anyway.
‘I also think because Cat was the one with the successful career out there, she was the one that chose that she wanted to leave that, at that right time, that’s a decision that she made and only she can make, and it’s your job to support that decision.”
Patrick started presenting The Late Late Show, which is filmed in Dublin on a Friday, from 2023. The following year, Cat landed her job on This Morning.
The Irish comedian also discussed how the Covid lockdowns, and being unable to work, impacted their relationship.
The couple lived in California for over 14 years but they put their Beverly Hills mansion on the market for $4.9 million (£3.8 million) and moved back to London in 2020 (pictured in 2017)
He explained: ‘When you work in entertainment, there’s a lot of time you might be working and you might record something and it takes a short period of time to do it, and people assume that goes out for half a year, you’ve been working on something for half a year,
‘Over the space of time, we’ve been married for 10 years, we’ve probably been married for about 30…
‘Because if you look at a normal couple when they get up in the morning and spend 45 minutes with each other and, you know, they get their breakfast and somebody leaves for work, and somebody else goes somewhere else, and you come back and have three or four hours with them that evening, if you’re lucky, maybe less than that.
‘You add that up and you see these pictures of these old people, “oh we’re 50 years married and we’re blissfully happy, and it’s been an amazing journey,” you go, “I think you might have spent five years, seven, max.”
‘So what was really interesting was for the rest of the world to end up in lockdown and see the stress that put on a load of relationships, the amount of time you’re spending with your partner anyway, that was really interesting, to see the time squeeze pushing people together in the same houses and some people could take the pressure and some people couldn’t.’
Patrick and Cat announced they had split on Tuesday.
In a joint statement, the pair confirmed: ‘We have taken the decision to end our marriage and are now separated. There is no other party involved.
‘We will continue to be united as loving parents to our children and would therefore kindly ask for our family privacy to be respected. There will be no further comment.’
Before marrying Patrick, This Morning presenter Cat was married to businessman Mark Whelan for five years. They divorced in 2006.
Northern Irish comedian and presenter Patrick was in a high-profile relationship with Amanda Bryam for five years, separating in 2003.
