Inside the love life of Denise Welch

TV star Denise Welch is one of 12 celebrity contestants competing in series 6 of Channel 4 reality show Celebrity Hunted, which began on January 5, 2025.

In the celebrity edition, participants compete for a shorter period (14 days) than in the original (25, originally 28).

Series 6 features Giovanni Pernice, Kai Widdrington, Denise Welsh, Duncan James and Christine McGuiness.

Denise Welch has spoken about her relationship history in the past, on Loose Women and elsewhere, and opened up about the “infidelities” that occurred during her first two marriages – to husbands David Easter and Tim Healy. Here’s a quick look at what she’s been up to over the years.

Denise Welch and her first husband David Easter were married for five years

Originally from Tynemouth, Northumberland, Jacqueline Denise Welch graduated from the Mountview Academy of Theater Arts in London in 1979.

Six years later, according to The Northern Echo, she married actor David Easter, from Hampshire. They were together for a “long time” before getting married.

You may know him from his roles in Brookside, Emmerdale, Hollyoaks or The Bill.

They divorced in 1988, after three years of marriage. The Echo quotes the Loose Women star as saying, at the time, that “David preached to me about monogamy and then decided he could play for Britain”.

By the late 1980s, both parties had moved on and remarried. But in 2001, Denise invited David onto her ITV2 show Soap Fever, for what the Echo called “the most difficult interview yet”.

Denise Welch and her second husband Tim Healy

Denise met Tim Healy while working for the Live Theater Company in Newcastle.

They married in Haringey, north-east London, in 1988, and have two sons together: Matty (1989) and Louis Vincent (2001).

Matty Healy is well known as the frontman of the pop rock group The 1975. And for briefly dating Taylor Swift in 2023, shortly after the megastar’s split from Joe Alwyn.

In a recent social media post addressing her health issues over Christmas, Denise shared a video of herself dancing with Matty and other family members over the festive period.

Matty’s younger brother, Louis Vincent, is an actor. He was born in Salford.

Denise made it clear during an episode of Loose Women in 2012 that she and Tim Healy had split some time before.

Star marries PR executive Lincoln Townley in Portugal

Months after revealing her split from Healy, Denise’s engagement to her PR manager, Lincoln Townley, became public.

They married in the Algarve region of Portugal in the summer of 2013.

Among the congregation were Christopher Biggins, Coronation Street actresses Jill Halfpenny and Angie Lonsdale, as well as Loose Women co-panelists Carol McGiffin, Lisa Maxwell, Shobna Gulati, Kate Thornton, Zoe Tyler, Jackie Brambles and Andrea McClean.

Born just after Christmas 1972, Lincoln Townley is 14 years younger than Denise Welch. She is his second wife, after a brief marriage to Beverley Scales in 1992, which broke up after just a few months, according to the Mirror.

He and Beverley have a son together, named Lewis.

Since working for Denise as a PR manager, he has changed direction. He was artist in residence at the Marriott Canary Wharf from 2015 to 2017 and sold a painting of boxer Muhammad Ali for £500,000 in 2017.

Pulling myself together, alcoholism and depression

In her autobiography Pulling Myself Together, Denise writes at length about the affair she had during her relationship with Tim Healy.

And the thing she believed in him having led.

She came to associate her own infidelity with the mental illness she suffered in the 2000s.

Denise has spoken many times about her relationship with alcoholism and her attendance at Alcoholics Anonymous. She also suffered from a long bout of depression, which she writes about in her book.

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Denise Welch on ‘Infidelities on Both Sides’ with Tim Healy

In October 2024, Denise spoke alongside her Loose Women co-panelists about perceived societal double standards towards women and men cheating.

“People generally have the impression that women cheat for emotional reasons,” she said. “And there is an absolutely valid reason why they are cheating.

“I agree, I think there are double standards,” she added. “However, when I admitted to my own infidelities, I was literally treated like the Wicked Witch of the West,” Denise Welch said.

“Certainly by the media in this country and by much of the public.

“Probably rightly so,” she said. “But I think there are double standards.”

She then said there had been infidelity on both sides during their 24 years of marriage.

MailOnline quotes her saying, in a separate clip, that there is a qualitative difference between emotional infidelity and sexual infidelity.

“Sexual infidelity could just happen behind a bike shed or something like that when you’re a little drunk,” she said, according to the newspaper.

“I don’t approve of it,” she explained. “I’m just saying I would prefer that to if my partner had met someone privately and had feelings for that person.”

Celebrity Hunted: Season 6 continues on Sundays on Channel 4. It began on January 5.

Learn more: Denise Welch’s swipe at her ‘younger’ Loose Women co-stars after on-air clash with Stacey Solomon

What do you think of Denise’s views on infidelity? Let us know with a comment on our Facebook page @EntertainmentDailyFix.