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Charlotte Church is set for a return on The Traitors: Uncloaked and she once dated a Welsh rugby icon who now runs a pub in south Wales
Charlotte Church and Gavin Henson were one of the most popular high-profile couples at the time(Image: Photo by Dave M. Benett/Getty Images)
Charlotte Church is set to return to our screens tonight when she joins host Ed Gamble on The Traitors: Uncloaked on BBC 1 at 9.05pm. Church was a star of the Celebrity Traitors last year and will now cast her view over the current crop in the castle following the conclusion of episode six.
The TV star is most well-known in Wales for dating national hero Gavin Henson – who is one of the most iconic and talented players to pull on the Welsh jersey and there are very few players who’ve impacted the game like him.
A world class talent on the field, Henson was rugby’s first genuine superstar, not only for his efforts in the sporting arena, but for the way he lived his life off it. He was often referred to as rugby’s answer to David Beckham. With perfectly spiked hair and always topped up on fake tan, Henson took immaculate care of his appearance and even shaved his legs.
His performance against England in the 2005 Six Nations would go down as arguably the most impactful and iconic ever. Henson put in a remarkable display, spectacularly tackling Matthew Tait on two separate occasions to put his stamp on the game. The centre then kicked the match-winning penalty, with Wales going on to win the Grand Slam.
Given the amount of natural talent Henson had, many would argue that he never truly realised his immense potential, with his international career fading out as the years went by. He would begin featuring in television programmes during his career and got involved in some unsavoury moments off the field as the focus on rugby blurred.
Henson’s relationship with Charlotte Church was an incredibly well-reported celebrity romance. Church was the face of Welsh music at the time – alongside Katherine Jenkins – so her and Henson were a true Welsh power couple.
Charlotte Church
Church rose to fame as a classical singer in the 1990s and was the youngest recording artist in history to reach a number one in the classical charts with her debut album Voice Of An Angel – she was 13. There was a media frenzy after she and Henson were first spotted together in April 2005, shortly after her split from previous boyfriend Kyle Johnson. Quite remarkably, Johnson was jailed for 12 years in 2013 after police found £10m worth of heroin at his home.
Speaking on her BBC podcast, Kicking Back With the Cardiffians, Church revealed she made the move for Henson after seeing him play for Wales: “I remember watching on this television, Wales vs England, when Gavin kicked the kick over. Then that night – I didn’t know Gav before that – I was like, I’m going to go out and find him in town. He is nice. Actually, I was going round asking everybody, ‘Do you know Gavin Henson? Where will he go out drinking afterwards?’ Nobody knew – but I did find him.”
In March 2007, Church revealed she was expecting their first child together, welcoming baby Ruby to the world later that year. Their second son, Dexter, was born in January 2009. Henson then proposed to Church on her 24th birthday in 2010 but everything went downhill just six weeks later, with the couple confirming they had split after five years hand-in-hand.
Speaking about the break-up, Church revealed it was a mutual decision: “When he proposed, I was overjoyed. It was amazing. I really was going to marry Gav and spend the rest of my life with him. But then he came back from Norway, and he’d changed, and I’d had time to think. We had both had a change of heart – so we were both of the same mind.”
On the media attention, she went on: “The press intrusion was insane, there was all sorts of dark stuff going on. There were stories in the papers all the time and lots of things were blown up, misconstrued and made seedy – when they really weren’t.
“There was a lot of shame being thrown at me, with the press desperately trying to make me a figure of sin and push this ‘fallen angel’ narrative. If I had let that shame in, or internalised it, my life could have gone in a very different way.”
The pair maintain a good relationship to this day as they co-parent their children together. Henson is married to Katie Wilson Mould and has been since 2019, while Church tied the knot with musician Jonathan Powell in 2017.
Controversy
Henson made as many headlines off the field as he did on it. The Welsh rugby star played for a multitude of clubs across Europe and got himself in trouble with the police and his own clubs on a couple of occasions.
In 2007, at the height of his fame, Henson and three other men were charged with disorderly conduct for drunken behaviour on a train connecting London and Cardiff. Despite this, the case was later dropped due to insufficient evidence. Two years later, he would receive a police caution for his behaviour following Wales’ Six Nations victory over England.
Then, in 2012, he was sacked by Cardiff after only eight games for “inexcusable” and “inappropriate” behaviour on a flight back from Glasgow. One year later, a drunken comment he made to Bath player Carl Fearns resulted in the Welsh icon being knocked out on CCTV.
Henson is a much calmer character nowadays and has a greater understanding of why that side of him came out after drinking. When sober and in a rugby environment, Henson has been described by former players as the ultimate professional and quite quiet, so his behaviour after drinking was an unfortunate contrast.
Henson recently spoke about the discovery of his “chimp”, a theory created Professor Steve Peters in his book ‘The Chimp Paradox’. “I didn’t understand the thoughts I was having after games where I wanted to go out and drink,” he explained in an interview with MailOnline. “They were a million miles away from my core values and goals in rugby.
“Now, having read the book, I understand that for most of my rugby career, the chimp was controlling me and running my life more than I was. If I’d found the book while I was still playing rugby, I’d 100 per cent have been a better player and maybe I wouldn’t have made the mistakes I did.
“In social interactions, I probably need a drink because I’m an introvert,” he continued. “If I have a drink, I become more of an extrovert and the chimp has more confidence! I can be good fun on a night out! But now I choose not to go into those environments. I’m not tee-total. In the last year, I’ve probably had one good drink. There’s a place in rugby for sharing a drink with your team-mates”.
Life as a pub landlord and return to rugby
Henson now lives the quiet life and is the landlord for his pub ‘The Fox’ in St Bride’s Major. Alongside his commitments at the pub, Henson is also back playing rugby with boyhood club Pencoed RFC, where he plays at fly-half.
Touching on the pub, Henson told The Times: “I was coming to the end of my career, and it [the pub] had been sat here for 18 months, two years. It was not nice for the village, and I needed something to do after rugby and to be busy, not to mourn rugby and get depressed, as they say everyone does.
“But be careful what you wish for because this is so full-on. We want to feel like we’ve achieved something with the pub. We’re perfectionists. We’re all about the detail.”
On his return to playing for Pencoed, Henson told BBC Scrum V: “I’m 43 now, so a bit old, as my wife tells me. But I’ve missed it, I’ve missed the physicality of it, and being in a team environment again and trying to win.
“I’m very competitive, I like trying to win, that’s the main thing. We have a good group of boys. We’re aiming for promotion, so hopefully it will be a good season and great for the club. I’m playing 10, I would like to play 12 but I am just not quite big enough yet. So I’ll still try to aim to get there but 10 at the moment.”
