Jane McDonald has opened up about her marriage to ex-husband Henrik Brixen, admitting she was “the only one” who didn’t realise she had no feelings for him during their five-year marriage
09:27, 18 Mar 2026Updated 09:30, 18 Mar 2026
Jane used to star on Loose Women(Image: Ken McKay/ITV/REX/Shutterstock)
Former Loose Women star an singer Jane McDonald has revealed she was never in love with her ex-husband Henrik Brixen.
The songwriter, who has achieved four UK top 10 albums, described the choice to end their marriage as “the best thing he ever did”. Jane and Henrik separated in 2003, after a five-year marriage during which he served as her manager.
Despite the extended relationship, Jane, 62, has admitted she was “the only one” who failed to recognise she had no romantic feelings for the Dutch ship plumbing engineer. Speaking on a podcast this week, the TV personality said: “It’s really strange this, because I should have had the best time of my life. I just got to Vegas, but I knew my marriage was on the brink.
Jane and Henrik(Image: JULIAN MAKEY/REX/Shutterstock)
“Everybody could see it and was going, ‘that’s not gonna last’. I was the only one who didn’t see it. But he was a great guy, and he did his best, you know.”
Jane subsequently rekindled her romance with The Searchers drummer Eddie Rothe and the couple became engaged. Eddie passed away from lung cancer at the age of 67 on March 26, 2021, reports the Mirror.
Looking back on this relationship, Jane told Jessie and Lennie Ware on podcast Table Manners that she continues to think of the musician every day.
Jane had been with Eddie since 2008, approximately five years following her divorce. She said, however, her break up with Henrik was friendly but he found it difficult to “play the game” in the music industry whilst acting as her manager.
The cruise ship singer, from Wakefield, West Yorkshire, continued: “He didn’t understand that it’s all a game, our business, and you have to play it. I was a club artist, a cruise ship singer, which was like, we don’t allow this in our industry. And nobody thought for one minute that I would go straight to number one with that album (her first album), nobody.
Jane is looking forward to the future(Image: Mirrorpix)
“Not even the record company. It was a shock to everybody. And then my tour sold out massively, which was, you know, another learning curve.
“And I was learning the business with Henrik (her husband and manager at the time) along the way. So it was like, hang on a minute. This is not tallying up [..] but it’s a game, and you have to play it. And then I got dropped from my labels, and I thought, how hard can this be? So I did it all myself. You don’t realise that, every artist thinks they need a record company, and you don’t. You just need a bit of money.”
The former Loose Women panellist had previously revealed in her 2019 autobiography that she began to feel “lonely” in her marriage, after Henrik dismissed the possibility of having children.
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