Helen Weathers - Access Interviews

Jann Pollard

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:10:20 +0000

He's the charming church minister who boasted of family money and a glittering writing career. But Roderick Sangster was in fact a conman and bigamist. Here, 'wife No3' Jann tells how she turned detective to expose the truth... Everything was gloriously perfect about Jann Pollard's wedding day: the sun shone as the pony and trap carried her to St Paul's Church in Leamington Spa that warm July day, where more than 100 of her delighted close family and friends waited to celebrate the occasion. With two failed marriages behind her and having recently recovered from breast cancer, Jann was thrilled to walk up the aisle towards former Scottish church minister Roderick Sangster; the man she described as her 'Mr Perfect'. 'It was the happiest day of my life,' says 56-year-old Jann, who married Roderick in 2004. 'No one had ever treated me with such love and respect as Rod. He was the kindest, most romantic man I'd ever met.' Today, when accountant Jann looks at her wedding pictures she wouldn't change a thing, with perhaps one exception - the groom. For Jann would later discover - after Roderick Sangster had walked out on her after two-and-a-half years, leaving £55,000 of debt - that he was not only a 'conman', but a bigamist. The day he'd gazed into Jann's eyes in church, promising to love her for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, he was still married - to his second wife Jill Sangster, a saleswoman he'd walked out on after six years of marriage, and also left with £30,000 of debt.

Jeannette Sayers

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:10:20 +0000

Perched on a stool in the swish American Bar in the Italian resort of Sorrento, Rudiger Sloot cut an elegant and rather dashing figure. The epitome of upper-class European chic, from the top of his well-groomed, sandy-haired head to the bottom of his crocodile skin shoes, he oozed class and money. Well, that's what Jeannette Sayers initially thought - taking in his well-cut suit, cufflinks and silk tie - when she was drawn into his seemingly glittering orbit. 'Rudi' - as he smoothly introduced himself - wasted no time in homing in on the glamorous blonde, gallantly pulling out her bar stool and impressing with his fluent Italian as he offered to translate her drinks order to the barman.

Helen Weathers

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:10:20 +0000

Mid-life crises have a tendency to strike at the most surprising and unexpected of times, and John Lloyd's was no different. It was 1990 and he had just been crowned the King of Laughter, winning two Baftas as producer of the comedy classic Blackadder and, to cap it all, a Lifetime Achievement Award. Just the latest triumph for the man who brought us Spitting Image and Not The Nine O'Clock News.

Simon Cremer

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:10:20 +0000

Simon Cremer has the deflated look of a man who has just endured the worst week of his life. His eyes are weary from lack of sleep, and stress radiates off him as he tries to make sense of the events which have made him the talk of Britain.

Jan Leeming

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:10:20 +0000

Cheetahgirl slinks into the room looking quite the cool cat, dressed in a sexy, slim-fitting leather jacket cinched at the waist, black slacks and killer, patent stiletto heels. For a woman of 66, she looks pretty darn good. Indeed, no man responding to her internet dating profile complete with daring username - suggesting exotic adventure with a hint of animal passion - would fail to feel a frisson of excitement on first meeting this elegant, lithe, youthful and alluring creature. And if her face looks vaguely familiar then that's because 'Cheetahgirl' is, as was revealed to her chagrin this week, the pseudonym for five-times divorced former BBC newsreader Jan Leeming.

Shevaun Pennington

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:10:20 +0000

The innocent victim, 12, of an internet paedophile describes: 'The abduction that RUINED my life'. All 17-year-old Shevaun Pennington has to do is close her eyes and she is 12 again, but for her there are none of the carefree summer memories a girl of her age might expect to treasure. Four days, in particular, haunt her still. Four days in July 2003 during which Shevaun sparked an international police hunt and became Britain's most famous missing child, after being abducted by a 31-year-old American paedophile who'd spent a year grooming her over the internet....

'My daughter was snatched by a paedophile, but her rescue was just the start of our nightmare'

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:10:20 +0000

Two childhood photographs, taken just a year apart, reveal the dramatic extent to which six-year-old Jane has changed. They could be of two different children. The first, taken in November 2005 when she was three, shows a pretty little girl with long hair, sparkling eyes and a big smile. In the second, taken 12 months later, she is almost unrecognisable. 'In the first picture, she looks like a beautiful doll, and in the second she's like a little old lady. 'It's as if something has died in her,' weeps her 36-year-old mother Angela. 'The light has gone out of her. It breaks my heart when I look at how she is now.' Jane, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, is the child who was snatched from her home on the night of January 2, 2006, by 26-year-old convicted paedophile Craig Sweeney. ...

The truth about mum and me: Carol Barnes's son James talks about the newscaster's last days

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:10:20 +0000

The last person to speak to TV newscaster Carol Barnes was her only son James Thomson, and the memory of that final conversation constantly replays in his mind like a tape on a permanent loop. 'I feel strange,' were Carol's first words when she phoned him on the afternoon of Friday, February 29. 'The left side of my body doesn't seem to be working properly. I'm a bit concerned, but please don't worry.' James, however, was worried enough to urge his mother to phone NHS Direct for advice, while he and his girlfriend, Fabia, immediately drove down from James's flat in London to his mother's flat in Brighton.

Monty Don

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:10:20 +0000

'Hold me darling, I think I'm dying': Monty Don speaks for the first time of the stroke that changed his life. Walking through the glorious gardens he created in the grounds of his Herefordshire farmhouse one cold morning in late February, Monty Don felt strangely and unusually ill. 'As I walked it felt as if I was tipping over, so I'd lean the other way and find myself tipping into a hedge instead. I cannot over-exaggerate how alarmed and unwell I felt,' says the gardening writer and television presenter. 'It was incredibly frightening because it was as if I had entered totally uncharted territory. I said to my wife Sarah: "Hold me because I think I'm dying and, if I am, I want to die in your arms."'

Koo Stark

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:10:20 +0000

With the weight of the world on her shoulders, Koo Stark reveals: 'The only thing keeping me going is my daughter'. The first thing you notice about Koo Stark is her hair. She wears it in exactly the same style as she did at the height of her fame 25 years ago, when as a ravishing young American actress she captured the heart of Prince Andrew and came tantalisingly close to becoming his Princess. It is long, heavy, swingy, lustrous and dark, although streaked with grey these days, and she tosses it over her shoulder in luxurious sweeping gestures in a rather glamorous manner reminiscent of shampoo commercials. In 2002, after she underwent a mastectomy after being diagnosed with second stage breast cancer, all her hair fell out during the subsequent course of chemotherapy. She grieved the loss of that more than her breast because to her it was the outward symbol of her femininity.

Charles Kane

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:10:20 +0000

A British tycoon and father of two has been a man and a woman ... and a man again ... and knows which sex he'd rather be

Adriana lliescu

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:10:20 +0000

'70-year-old mother of three-year-old-daughter: I did this for women everywhere'. The little old lady who peers from behind the door of her flat in a high-rise tower block looks every one of her 70 years, if not more. The dyed, black hair serves to accentuate rather than distract from the heavily lined features you would expect in a woman of her age. Despite her repeated insistence that she couldn't be fitter or healthier, Adriana lliescu - a stooped, slight woman who celebrated entering her eighth decade last Saturday - looks in serious need of a lie-down, a soothing cup of tea and some peace and quiet. Her daughter Eliza, however, has other ideas, as energetic three-year-olds have a tendency to do. Eliza, conceived via IVF courtesy of donated sperm and eggs implanted by a Romanian fertility expert seemingly keen to make medical history, is no longer the much-dreamed-of babe in arms.....

Kevin Whately

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:10:20 +0000

'Mum's forgotten who I am': Kevin Whately reveals the agony of his mother's Alzheimer's

Chris Whitehouse

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:10:20 +0000

'My mother was a snob, says Mary Whitehouse's son'. "On the eve of a drama about Mary Whitehouse the zealot clean-up TV campaigner, her youngest son launches an astonishing attack on the mother he didn't talk to for 15 years Chris Whitehouse last saw his mother a couple of days before she died. They hadn't spoken for more than 15 years - following his 1983 arrest for cannabis possession - and he was stunned to discover that age had not mellowed her. 'She was 91 years old, but she was still convinced she could make a difference, she still thought that all of society's ills could be undone and that we could return to this forgotten, golden time which ceased to exist long ago,' says 61-year-old Chris. ..."

Wendy Mackness

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:10:20 +0000

'My husband and THREE sons are off to Iraq - but I wouldn't have it any other way'. "Having notched up 24 years as an Army wife, Wendy Mackness has with time learned to cope with the constant anxiety which accompanies each of her husband Danny's tours of duty in far-flung and often war-ravaged countries. He's been shot at in Bosnia, almost blown up by a bomb in Northern Ireland, and come under rocket attack in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Each time he's survived to tell the tale - but not to Wendy, he says, because he doesn't like to cause her unnecessary worry. Next month, however, the 47-year-old major's wife will find herself in the unique and unenviable position of having all those feelings of anxiety and uncertainty over the safe return of a loved one magnified four times over. ...."

Les Dennis

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:10:20 +0000

'I'm not Les Miserable any more!' How betrayed Les Dennis found happiness... and is to become a father again

Howard Raymond

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:10:20 +0000

'The secret guilt my father took to his grave'. Speaking for the first time Paul Raymond's son Howard reveals how the porn king's ruthlessness tore his family apart

Karen Streeter

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:10:20 +0000

I'm a white woman but I've become a surrogate mother for an Asian couple.

Danielle Heaney and Nick Cameron

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:10:20 +0000

How we fell in love, by the brother and sister who grew up apart and met in their 20s. And if they have sex again, a judge says they will go to jail.

Kim Cotton

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:10:20 +0000

Now I realise how hopelessly naive I was to become Britain's first surrogate mother, admits Kim Cotton