This is a very British story. This story would be like the Queen leaving Prince Philip to run off with her favorite horse. This story is like Lady Mary Crawley rolling around on a bed full of hats. Some of you are possibly familiar with the British TV star Robson Green. He’s been famous, for the most part, in Britain since the 1990s. You can see his IMDB here. I know him mostly from Wire in the Blood, a popular procedural series that ran 2002-2008. He’s currently starring in Grantchester, which is currently airing on PBS Masterpiece as we speak. He’s never really “crossed over” to America, but Americans who regularly watch BBC America and PBS Masterpiece are probably familiar with him. Robson, you see, ran off with the vicar’s wife. Seriously, that kind of thing still happens in 2016.
TV star Robson Green has reportedly run off with the wife of a vicar. Rev Geoffrey Short, 57, was stunned when his wife of 16 years, Zoila, 43, suddenly left him for actor Green, 51, after they allegedly struck up a relationship at a gym in the outskirts of Newcastle.
The devastated clergyman told the Daily Mirror: ‘When she told me I felt anger, amazement. There are questions I’ll probably never get answers to. It’s just total shock, disbelief and sorrow. Of course there is a lot of anger towards Green, but as a Christian I have to forgive. It’s made me question my faith, but I’ve got to stay strong.’
Explaining how he discovered his wife was leaving him, Rev Short said: ‘I got home from work one day and all of a sudden everything changed. She announced she was leaving to live with Robson Green. She said they got talking in the gym and she fell in love. She left immediately. This all came as a huge shock to me.’
In the weeks leading up to the revelation, the vicar said their relationship had been ‘strange’ but he assumed it was just part of ‘the ups and downs of life’.
‘I knew he was a member at the gym, but I had no idea there was a friendship,’ said Rev Short. ‘Months and months ago she asked me, “Do you know someone called Robson Green? He goes to the gym.” I just replied, “Yes, he’s an actor”, and she said, “Oh”.’
Rev Short and Zoila, who he claims left their marital home to be with Green six weeks ago, have two sons together aged 16 and 20. He described her as a ‘fantastic mother’ and the ‘ideal vicar’s wife’ but recent events have cast a shadow over their previously perfect relationship.
He added that he has only seen Zoila twice since she left to live with Green in a Northumberland apartment while the actor’s country pile is restored aster suffering substantial flood damage in December.
Robson Green, 51, is a vicarage-wrecker. He ran off with the vicar’s wife after presumably carrying on an affair with the woman for months. I wish we got scandals like this in America. I don’t even think an American actor has ever run off with the wife of a preacher or minister. And gossip is the poorer for it. While I feel sorry for the vicar – it seriously sounds like he is in shock – I also think it’s somewhat refreshing that an actor went for a vicar’s wife rather than, say, a 19 year old club girl.
PS… Yes, I find him attractive. So does my mother.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
The vicar’s wife has good taste…I’d probably run off with him too, he’s yummy.
Judging you all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNcg44FW-jA
#neverforget
I LIVED through this.
(plus, he will always be Jimmy from Casualty to me.)
Oh my word. He was cute!
@T.Fanty, LOL @ “lived through this”.
Wasn’t ‘Reckless’ the peak of his career, a TV series wherein he has a torrid affair with his boss’s wife, older woman Francesca Annis?
Personally, don’t care for his hairline and resting jerk-face. I fear this will not end well for the lady. Also, amazing that the vicar gives a pleasant interview to the Daily Mail.
I LOVED that! That was the first thing I saw him in (I’m in the US).
Honestly though, (and I KNOW this is being extremely shallow and mean), but have you *seen* a pic of that vicar (https://www.yahoo.com/news/heartbroken-vicar-whose-wife-ran-off-with-robson-095910558.html)?? Given a choice between the two, physically, there’s no comparison.
But seriously… I’m of the mind that if you are that infatuated with someone outside of your relationship, exit the relationship first, and *then* have at it!
Oh my god! We can’t all be supermodels, but holy Moses!
Wow. Poor vicar but…he’s probably a very nice man but…geesh.
Really? Obviously that is not the most flattering photo of him, but he looks like most middle aged British men I know. He sounds lovely, too. No one deserves to have their home broken up.
@Amy You are right no one deserves to be cheated on and left. The entire story reads like a stereotype. He’s most likely better off.
Well she’s nothing to look at either! I agree with imqrious2, have a little respect and leave first and then go on to the next!
I shouldn’t be laughing,but wow!!! He has nice eyes.
He has come-talk-to-me eyes!
He was great in Wire in the Blood but this is a sad story for the vicar’s family.
Loved Wire in the Blood. That’s all I’ve got.
Green’s personal life has always been a mess. This is not surprising.
Yes ,this reminds me that he has had a broken relationship before..I do not remember the details but it was a bit of scandal and another heartbreak !
What is it about actors?..Or is it just the way we live now?
Poor vicar!!
Ironically he’s now in this show called Grantchester in which he teams up with a vicar to solve crimes. Think his buddy vicar should keep his ladies away from him?
Yeah, Sidney should be worried 😀
If I were Sidney’s wife, Sidney would not need to be worried. Robson doesn’t look nearly as good in an undershirt or swimming trunks. 🙂
He solves crimes in his undershirt and swimming trunks with a vicar?
I must track this down to watch. High concept enthralls me.
And he does it in the 1950s, Liberty. The magic of TV, dontchaknow. Plus, Grantchester has bonus James Norton. LAK is in love with him.
He does. I’m enjoying the second season and I didn’t see the first so now I have to go find it and binge watch. The vicar’s in love with a married woman too. And I think the rector is gay. And a guy’s going to hang for helping a 15 year old girl abort a vicar’s (not THIS vicar!) baby because the 15 years old died.
Robson is growing on me, but LAK can’t have James Norton.
She might fight you for him, bluhare. She’s got it bad!
Sixer/ Bluhare: i’m collecting them. Soon i shall have a quiver of sexy men types to drool over.
James Norton and the ELF.
You can’t have them all, LAK. I get Norton. And Turner.
Yes but the actual vicar character in Grantchester is way hotter!
So true.
Ha! This story IS so English. He’s a great actor and very cute. I doubt they started having an affair the instant she found out he shared the same gym. These things take time, people. It sounds like she left abruptly as soon as something happened.
I have a lot more respect for someone who isn’t fake and is willing to look bad but, give her husband the truth and freedom to move on as well.
I know someone who has been having an affair for years and it’s gross- she doesn’t want to look bad in her circle by leaving him.
This is diabolically hilarious!
–TheRealPinky
There’s a Hyacinth Bucket joke to be made in all this, I’m sure. That being said, I have liked Robson since I watched Reckless on Masterpiece Theater.
I love that you just said that….Hyacinth would be horrified
It’s been awhile but didnt she have a sister who was always running off with the married vicar types.
Naya, you’re right. I remember vividly how Hyacinth’s sister Rose was always wooing the local vicar, who actually WAS quite dishy!
It’s NOT the sister with a swimming pool and room for a pony!
@Zut alors, you forgot the Mercedes! That was Violet, her husband was a bookie I think. Rose was the one who was always after the dishy Vicars. She lived with Onslow (of the vests) and Daisy, and was an inveterate man-eater.
He lived in my apartment building for a while a few years back when he was filming in Manchester UK, we kept bumping into each other in the gym/pool and he was really nice. After a while he kept turning up where I was, in the Lake District on holiday I bumped into him, I now living in Cambridge where they film Grantchester so we have this hilarious joke he’s stalking me…..but he’s run off with the vicars wife, I feel so used!!!! Lol
This made me laugh.
It could have been you we are reading about now! You should have tried harder.
lols!
Hey, is he as good looking as he seems? I mean he´s old enough to be my dad, but I have always found him so handsome.
No, no, you’re not alone dear. I noticed him when I came across Grantchester on TV.
But CarrieUK, silver lining: you are still available for Harry! Get busy!
I lived in Cambridge for three years. Beautiful city. I watch Grantchester mostly to see old familiar places.
I love how most people I know in the UK have friends or ex-roommates who are famous. My personal favorite is that friends of mine used to live with Paul Bettany. Sigh….
He’s quite handsome…HONK for Robson! 😉 I shouldn’t be laughing since there are children and poor husband involved but I can’t help it 🙂 You don’t read stories like this often.
Sad for the family to be honest but;
Best. Celebitchy. Headline. Ever.
Haahahaha. This is like Midsommer Murders without the murder. I LOVE small English villages and their drama that always lurks beneath the surface. So the good Christian vicar has forgiven her but decided to air it out in a national newspaper? If reincarnation exists, please let me be reborn in an English village.
I live in one of those villages but we only have a part-time vicar because nobody goes to church. He has to do four parishes but still turn up to all the fetes and vegetable-judging contests, poor thing. Our biggest drama is dog poo under the noticeboard outside the village shop. WHO WOULD LET THEIR DOG DO SUCH A THING AND NOT CLEAN IT UP? HAS THE PERP NOT HEARD OF POOP BAGS? Is it Mrs A or Mrs B? Is it the lab or the collie? And will shop CCTV reveal the culprit? We need to know. (You may think I am joking. I am not. But I might have changed the dog breeds in fear of both Mrs A AND Mrs B. They are scary).
😂 I love it!
Cute, cute, CUTE!!!
What?! TV has been lying to me. All my knowledge of England villages comes from Midsommer and Harvey Weinstein movies. So in my mind there are affairs galore, secret prostitution rings run by the farmers wives and the stable hand is sleeping with both the Lady and the Lord of the manor.
Seriously though, could you recommend some good village based shows or movies. Any genre is fine.
Edit: also Vicar of Dibley. Your vicar sounds like he faces similar troubles.
Sixer, you have posted a lot of funny, interesting, and/or thought provoking posts here at Celebitchy. But, this one is my ABSOLUTE favorite.
Naya: Father Brown
Sixer, that is the most British CB post I have ever read! LOL at vegetable judging!
Naya – you might like Home Fires, which is a village-based WWII story about the Women’s Institute coping during rationing and bombing.
There’s no crime here at all, I’m sorry to report. But our Parish Council meetings almost exactly replicate Vicar of Dibley. I am not joking. Dog poo is honestly the current hot topic. Because the shop owner doesn’t see why they should pay the whole bill for the CCTV lease if the village wants to use it for CRIME DETECTION. Sides are being taken. This could spiral into outright village civil war. In the meantime, the part-time vicar will still have to present the trophy at not one, but four, quiz nights.
Sixer, please continue this tale! I want to know what happens!! Whose poo??!!
(Ah, what Barbara Pym might have made of all this! Didn’t the vicar get tempted by a scheming vicar’s widow in Excellent Women?)
I’m busy trying to be Switzerland, Liberty. Because CCTV leases are EXPENSIVE. But dog poo is AN OUTRAGE. And why would anyone post important notices about quiz nights, medieval banquets and vegetable-judging contests on the IMPORTANT VILLAGE NOTICEBOARD if they have to risk stepping in dog poo to do it?
Sixer, I am convinced it is someone whose marrows or roses were not favorably received by the judges last year, or an angry soul who KNOWS someone cheats at Quiz Night, and this is their (natural earthy) protest!!
I am so excited. Can you and Mr Sixer perhaps wear some dark clothing and post yourselves in the shadows to watch and find the culprit one night? Pleeeeeeeeze.
@LAK and Sixer Thanks. I’ll look those up.
I am Switzerland! I have to live here!
That is why God invented disguises, Sixer! Sheesh.
@Sixer – my only knowledge of rural English life comes from three sources, and one of them is Suburban Shootout (which I watched because Hiddles was in it).
(the other two are Jilly Cooper bonkbuster novels and Midsomer Murders)
Rural English life is genuinely as daft and eccentric as the stereotypes have it. But it’s also very warm, very community-driven and lovely a lot of the time. Honest!
Does the vicar judge the vegetables– a side specialty? Or just preside over the judging? In the US, not surprisingly, the biggest vegetables are often the best (i.e. pumpkins the size of a VW bug at Halloween), but I’m guessing your vegetables are judged on more subtle characteristics?
And news! The youngest Birdix finally found a live hedgehog to admire, in a petting zoo type of place. Over the moon happy–wants to go back every weekend.
Youngest Birdix = Fledglix?
Oh, Birdix. Hurrah! Mini Birdix hugged a hog!
No judging. The poor soul just has to turn up to everything over four parishes. I feel for him, I really do. He’s a nice bloke. And still wifed up!
Sounds like my hometown and I live in America haha. The most exciting thing that ever happens in the local paper police blotter are landscaping companies getting warnings about the seasonal leaf blowing bans (yes that is a thing). Occasionally we get coyote spottings in our police blotter (some kids got attacked a few years ago) or reports of an idiot deer getting run over. Real exciting for an NYC suburb.
Also see if you can find ‘Last of the Summer Wine’ for quirky English village life.
Amelie – our police bulletins make great noises about community sessions to get all your belongings invisibly marked for free. You know, so that the police can identify and recover them after all the burglaries that never happen!
Sixer, this is adorable and very villagey. But my God, reading it makes me happy that I live in the Smoke.
Tina – I spent 30 years in the smoke. I do miss it sometimes but much of my family is there and I visit often enough. Even though I am surrounded by parochial nutcases, the quality of life is SO much better here. Money matters less. Everyone can afford to live even though most people earn bugger all. People are HAPPY. It’s contagious.
That sounds lovely, just not for me. But I’m really glad you like it and it works for you. Maybe I will leave London one day when it all gets to be too much.
He’s a cutie. I liked him in Being Human. And while I look down upon him for getting involved with a married lady, the vicar needs to be calling out his wife, not Green. She was the one that made a commitment to him, not the actor.
But, unfortunately, and this is very shallow of me, I know, when you see the pictures of the Vicar and Robson Green side by side, the Vicar is not exactly what you would call “dishy”. And just by the by, how old do you reckon Mrs Vicar was when Mr Vicar glommed onto her? Dollars to doughnuts this was not his first marriage.
Oh noes! Mr Sixer loves Robson Green. Dave Tucker forever! Plus, he said celebrities who avoid tax by offshore cheating are wankers. He said wankers, not me. Mr Sixer will be most disappointed in the vicarage-wrecking fall from grace of one of his favourites.
This story cheered me up no end.
Any story involving a vicar in the countryside tends to be midsomer murders hilarious.
I recognise that there are real people involved here, but honestly, you can’t make this up.
I’m telling Mr Sixer on you. His love for Robson Green has remained undiminished throughout the years, despite Unchained Melody, even despite Extreme Fishing, even despite a Page 3 girl marriage. But Mr Sixer is the immovable object with regards to cheating. It. Is. Not. On. I fear his Robson flame is about to be extinguished. And you LAUGH, woman, you LAUGH?
He ran off with the Vicar’s wife!!!!!
It’s the best gossip story evah!!
I have to check that we are not in 1950s Britain. The WI ladies would not approve.
Actually, being a vicar’s wife, do you think she’s a member of the WI?
Imagine the curtain twitching.
This story is glorious.
You need to bake a sponge cake for Mr Sixer, together with a cuppa to calm him down.
She MUST be a member of the WI! And probably the Mother’s Union, too. We have both here. I bet she can do flower-arranging. And play the organ.
Mr Sixer is home. And he says he is very disappointed in Robson and you are a mean lady who doesn’t take cheating nearly seriously enough.
It’s like crossing the tale of Jessica Seinfeld with Vicar of Dibley!
Those are required skills for a proper vicar’s wife. I’d be disappointed in anything less.
Infact, the only fly in the ointment is that they met in the gym. That’s too city mouse for this tale.
I agree. They should have met at the village fete when he dropped in the vicar’s wife’s tent who was selling hand knitted baby booties to raise money to refurb the church organ.
I like bluhare’s version of the meet cute!
Our current fundraising drives are for the church roof and stage lighting for the village hall. If we can get half the money for stage lighting, the National Lottery will give us the rest. NEVER volunteer to fill out funding applications. They are rabbit holes of everlasting doom. I’d rather be a flower-arranging vicar’s wife, Robson Green or no Robson Green, than the resident funding application bot. Sadly, I am the resident funding application bot.
I admire her straight up honesty. No bs, she’s outta there.
I was waiting for an explanation for the euphemism “run off with the vicars wife” but lo and behold, it’s literal. Lol
Aww, that’s awful.
Loved him on Strike Back and now on Grantchester.
ETA: I find him very handsome and love his accent.
I know and love him from Touching Evil, a crime series of the 1990s.
I loved that, and he was great as Tony Hill in Wire in the Blood. He does have form in this area though. I am not sure why the vicar feels the need to publicise it.
Here’s the thing. She has kids. So if she had an affair and fell in love, still why wouldn’t she first move to her own place and down the road bring that relationship out in the open to her teenagers? To pick up and leave and move right in with another man is so selfish in regards to the emotions of her two children, even though older. And it’s so hurtful to the man she was married to for years At least, have some empathy and give him time to adjust to the shock of their separation and getting divorced and the face she’s in love with another man.
Yes this! Did she just up and leave her children? Did she take them? Children and teenagers feel so unsettled by divorce. So hurt. It says he has only hears from her twice? What about her boys?
So Mr. Vicar and soon to be ex Mrs. Vicar were married for 16 years but have a 20 year old son? Scandal!!
That was my take-away as well!
how did I miss that bit?
The Vicar has a history?!?
I should be cackling at this story, it’s awful, but so funny.
lol I was scrolling down to see if anyone had commented on that! Were Mr and Mrs Vicar living in sin?!!
I do feel bad for the kids though, this is rather public.
This could turn messier. It was the vicar in the morning room with the tea caddy!
🙂
😂
Gee, can not believe the glee and flippancy over his affair with another man’s wife because it fits a quaint British image. Many of you are so harsh on celebs like Gwen Stefani for moving on with Shelton or Taylor Swift’s posse, but find this amusing? Doubt the vicar or his boys are laughing right now.
It’s true! We roast people over here for that kind of thing and in some cases (Meg Ryan for example) you never really recover.
The vicar is taking it better than I would if my significant other left me like this. He talking to the newspaper, airing their business for the world to see. How embarrassing for the kids!
What I want to know is, many of the posters want go go on own about how if the husband’s fault if he’s the cheater (which I agree with), and drag him for blood and so I wonder if this will happen because the wife is a cheater, or would that “slut shaming,” and trashed for “her choices” even though she cheated on her husband and left her behind her kids?
Or do we save maritAl “slut shaming” for LeAnn Rhymes.
I have always found him attractive; however, home-wrecking is like the opposite of sexy. How is this new woman going to feel when she’s the one left behind in 15 or 20 years. What are her kids going to think about all of this? The poor vicar. Their poor kids. Poor anyone who apparently gets involved with him (Green).
I think 15 or 20 years may be on the optimistic side…
Too many jokes, folks. I feel so sorry for the poor vicar and his kids. Everyone will be pointing the finger at them, gossiping about what a bore the vicar must have ben blah blah blah. The woman is a tool and so is the idiot who went after her.
Agree.
They have 2 sons age 16 & 20, but have only been married for 16 years?
I wonder if he will be labeled a homewrecker for years to come?
#sarcasm
Well this is a different angle on “as the actress said to the bishop”.
😂
Had sympathy for the vicar until he described her as the “ideal vicar’s wife”–then I lost it
Yes, me too. That sentence cracked me up. The poor vicar.
He is very attractive but it’s quite ruined by the homewrecking..
You cannot wreck a happy home……..something in the relationship was not working.
Then she should have left and been up front instead of having a shabby affair.
Sorry, don’t by that as an excuse. It went out with Mad Men, and he/she just doesn’t understand me so I think I’ll cheat.
It’s rather appropriate that he’s run off with Mrs Short because he himself is vertically challenged… (Saw him at the supermarket with his ex-wife years ago, M&S!)
He does have an air of hobbitness about him… is it the ears? The twinkle in the eye?
I think its the hairy feet!
“Hobbitness.”
I think it’s the size of his head in proportion to his body.
Have been desperately in love with him since “Touching Evil” and “Reckless” and “Wire in the Blood”. If I’d known he was hanging out lonely at some gym in Newcastle, I’d have resigned my American citizenship, relocated, and started working out there . . . although I might be on the tall side for him. Eh, well, nobody’s perfect . . .
Me too seesittellsit! I collect all his old shows. I can’t seem to make myself interested in fishing, though I’ve been tempted just to stare at those blue eyes!
I have no sympathy for the vicar, only the sons in this situation. The relationship was obviously not working on some level and the wife was not happy, hence she left her husband. Happy wives do not run off with aging playboy actors if they are content in their marriage. The vicar only need to blame himself – you cannot steal a wife away – she has to be willing to go!
Yeah sure, Mika, let’s blame the victim. This is exactly the kind of finger pointing I referred to previously. Maybe, just maybe the wife was content but got blindedand flattered by the famous actor, who should have stayed away from her.
Like I said before, are you going to parade out the old chestnut, “He just doesn’t understand me.” My best friend had her boss pull that on her when he wanted to have an affair.
I don’t like the tone of the Vicar, he speaks of his wife as if she was his pet. She was unhappy and found someone else. At least she didn’t prolong it and just outright told him. Having said that, cheating is wrong on every level. If you want out of a marriage you don’t cheat. You leave hopefully on good terms and then move on.
I hope the kids will be ok and both parents should make their wellbeing the priority.
Who knew that Robson was such a rascal 😉
Ha ha ha. Cheaty Vicar’s Wife, I send to you a cryptic warning: Beware of S. Robson is one of the most untrustworthy, unpleasant humans in the British entertainment industry and will happily stab you in the back and consider it payback for the chip on his shoulder (even if you had nothing to do with that) – but she is oh so very much worse. And even though he’s not the cash cow he once was, and she isn’t married to him, S still does not like other women around him. S does not like other women, period. Watch your back.
Ooh, now this is good gossip. JJ, I salute you.