TV star Carrie Bickmore’s bombshell break up from Chris Walker has shocked Australia – however based on an insider, one telling signal revealed potential bother between the previous golden couple way back.
The high producer and the previous The Project host met on the set of this system in 2012, two years after Bickmore misplaced her first husband, Greg Lange, to mind most cancers.
He turned a stepfather to Bickmore and Lange’s son, Ollie, and in 2015, the couple welcomed their first youngster collectively – a daughter Evie. Three years later, they turned dad and mom as soon as extra with the arrival of one other woman, Adelaide.
Both Bickmore and Walker confirmed their separation after a decade collectively on Wednesday morning through an announcement shared to their Instagram Stories.
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“Hi there. It’s with immense sadness that [Carrie] and I have decided to separate,” the pair wrote.
“While this is a tough time, our focus is to concentrate on parenting, loving and supporting our three amazing children, Ollie, Evie and Addie with everything we’ve got. They are doing great.
“We won’t be making any further comment at this stage.”
The news despatched shockwaves throughout the nation, with followers left shocked by the break-up, which many believed had come out of nowhere.
However, based on leisure commentator Peter Ford, who’s heard on radio round Australia, the primary cracks might have been beginning to present nearly a 12 months in the past, when Bickmore introduced on-air in March that she could be departing The Project for “a few months” to “seize the moment” by quickly transferring to the UK together with her household.
It was a stunning transfer, however on the time it appeared to make sense, with Bickmore explaining that the couple and their children have been “heading off on a family adventure together”.
“We’ve been wanting to do it for a while but lots of reasons, timing hasn’t been right, but we figure it’s never going to be the perfect time to go and it’s something we really want to do before my son starts his final years at school so we’re doing term two in the UK,” she mentioned final 12 months.
“So I will be off for a couple of months.”
Ford mentioned whereas he was “taken aback” by news of the break up, and pressured he didn’t know “what’s going on behind closed doors”, with the good thing about hindsight, the prolonged European getaway might have been an indication of issues to return.
The prolonged vacation in the course of the 12 months definitely raised eyebrows, particularly given Bickmore’s profitable plum position which got here with a reported $1.5 million wage and which is taken into account to be among the best within the notoriously aggressive TV business.
“Clearly, she took time off last year in Europe, and I thought, most people don’t take time off like that – if they’ve got a TV or radio contract, you don’t take an extended break in the middle of the year,” Ford advised news.com.au.
“So I thought that was about [them being] in search of something, trying to find something. “But she came back and resumed work, and now this.
“I honestly don’t know [what’s caused the split], but Carrie and Chris Walker are both really decent people.”
He agreed that the business was shocked by the announcement, regardless of the couple going through a brutal 2022 which noticed Walker embroiled in a nude Skype scandal after by accident revealing himself to as much as 9 ABC co-workers.
Bickmore remained tight-lipped over the May incident because it gripped headlines, although some speculated it could have put pressure on their relationship.
After her return to Australia in July, Bickmore additionally opened up concerning the household’s UK journey on her Hit Network radio present Carrie & Tommy, revealing that holidaying as a household had been “really, really hard”, and significantly tough for her youngest.
Then, in October, the Gold Logie winner broke down as she introduced she was leaving The Project after 13 years as host, describing the choice because the “hardest of my professional life”.
The revelation got here amid a turbulent interval for the Channel 10 program, which was rocked by a mass exodus of expertise final 12 months after Bickmore and co-hosts Lisa Wilkinson and Peter Helliar all introduced their departures inside weeks of one another.
“People thought they had weathered that storm last year with the online meeting and everything – we still don’t exactly know the details of it, but it seemed like maybe the European vacation was all part of that,” Ford mentioned of the break up.
“There’s a lot we don’t know – Carrie has obviously put out a fairly short statement on her terms and details, and knowing the sort of person she is, I’d be very surprised if she ever had the intention of offering more detail.”
