Phil Tufnell is a former English international cricketer. He played 42 test matches and 20 one day internationals for the England cricket team as well as playing for the Middlesex County Cricket Club from 1986-2002. The sports legend took 121 test match wickets with an average of 37.68 and he took more than 1,000 wickets across all first-class cricket. The bowler has made a trademark name out of his personality on shows such as A Question of Sport, They Think It’s All Over and Strictly Come Dancing. And now the 53-year-old will appear on BBC’s Pointless Celebrities.
Ex-cricketer turned television star Phil Tufnell is renowned as a cricket icon, the King of the Jungle and an all-round cheeky chappie.
He started his career after signing to Middlesex as a teenager, but his personal life has been quite a tumultuous ride over the years.
Mr Tufnell met his first wife Alison Squires at his team’s ground, Lords, while she watched a match in 1983.
The couple were married three years later but soon drifted apart. The marriage ended in 1989.
After he separated from Ms Squires, Phil went on to date Jane McEnvoy.
The couple had one daughter called Ellie in 1992 and became engaged after that.
At this point, Phil Tufnell was regularly playing for England and it was during the country’s tour of the West Indies in 1993-1994 that he met Lisa Barr at a beach barbecue.
The couple were married in 1994, with both publicly professing their love for one another.
He said: “This is the happiest day of my life and a whole new start for me.
“I wanted to marry Lisa because I wanted to show how much I love her, to make that commitment to a faithful marriage.”
Wife Lisa also publicly shared her adoration of Mr Tufnell.
She told the Daily Mail: “I know Phil. His bark is worse than his bite.
“From my experience, he’s probably the easiest person in the world to get on with – just a loveable rogue. I’ve tamed him but it wasn’t hard.”
“He’s made me the happiest woman in the world and I couldn’t have found a better husband.”
The couple went on to have daughter Poppy in March 1997, but their marriage lasted marriage just seven years before they divorced.
Phil Tufnell met fitness instructor Dawn Brown at a charity cricket match and said that the moment he met her he was smitten.
He said: “She’s a loyal, honest woman and just what I needed.
“I was always looking for love so to speak and to settle down a little bit.
“Previous relationships hadn’t gone quite so well – as you say they were a bit of a car crash. But then the cricket was my family in a way.
“And when that had gone, thankfully Dawn came along and pointed me down the right path.
“Otherwise who knows what might have happened?”
The couple went on to get married in Mauritius in July 2005, but sadly it didn’t go off without a hitch.
The day before their nuptials the couple had to go to the local register office at 9.30am and queue with other couples to complete some paperwork.
Unfortunately they had had a heavy night the day before and the heat in the crowded room soon got to the groom-to-be.
Tuffers said: “Suddenly, before I have time to dash to the toilet, my stomach does a cartwheel and I throw up, which makes me really popular.”
Even the wedding day itself proved memorable for all the wrong reasons.
After an idyllic ceremony on the beach the couple returned to their room to freshen up only to learn from the TV news that the 7/7 bombers had struck in London.
They immediately picked up the phone to call family and friends and reassure themselves that everyone was safe.
The couple have now been together for 17 years and are blissfully happy according to Tuffers.
He told the Mirror: “I met Dawn in the hospitality tent at a charity cricket match I was playing in. The two of us got chatting and I don’t think we have stopped laughing since.
“Humour is vital in a relationship, to maintain the friendship. Me and Dawn get on like a house on fire still, that is because we have a bit of a laugh, enjoy the same sort of things, we’re both social people.”
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