Ulrika Jonsson Age: A Life in the Spotlight

For Ulrika Jonsson, age 52, it can seem odd to picture a life still stuck in the spotlight. But the Swedish-born weathergirl, television presenter, mum and reality TV persona is embarking on her sixth decade in the world.

As we head into 2020, she is as relevant as she was in her heyday in the 1990s. Back then, you could spot Ulrika regularly on TV shows like Shooting Stars and Gladiators. In the Aughts and Teens, she added these titles to her public persona CV:

• Celebrity Big Brother winner;
• Social media favourite;
• Newspaper columnist and;
• Phone-hacking victim.

As the latter points suggest, Ulrika is often tabloid fodder for several other reasons off camera. As is often the case (or anyone else covered as regularly as she is), the details can get a bit personal.

Why we’re talking about Ulrika Jonsson age these days…

In short, a person with a book titled Honest is going to be forward and candid. (Oddly, that’s also the case when Ulrika isn’t even trying to be honest, forward or candid.)

So we’re not talking about Ulrika Jonsson’s age these days specifically. Instead, we’re talking about her revealing, open-book approach to her public persona. Marital intimacy plays a key role in her recent mentions in the news. Ulrika’s in the news these days for a memorable, highly personal appearance on a daytime show: an October 2019 guest spot on Loose Women.

Speaking with panellists including Ruth Langford and Stacey Solomon, Ulrika opened up about her struggle living in a sexless marriage. and intimacy struggles with then-husband Brian Monet, an ad executive. The studio audience, together with TV viewers at home, watched as graphics like “Ulrika Jonsson: I had sex once in eight years” flashed on the screen.

In this revealing interview, Ulrika Jonsson reveals all in the clip below:

“Nearly two years ago, just before my 50th birthday, I remember thinking I might have to just accept that I would never have sex ever again.

“The reason I thought this is because I had not had sex for four and (a) half years. And the time before that was four years prior. I was living in a sexless marriage for nearly a decade.

“That just didn’t feel right. It felt unnatural and as if part of my life was over.”

Sexless intimacy struggles are a bold topic to address, one that goes beyond the matter of Ulrika Jonsson’s age. That’s the case regardless of how many years of marriage or age is involved. In addition, it’s a matter that anyone – including an open & public profile like Ulrika Jonsson – can relate with.

Unleashing her natural beauty

Instead of wallowing in the pangs of divorce and the struggles with intimacy, Ulrika – true to form – has emerged quite nicely in the same month.

Showing off her natural beauty in the process, she shared makeup-free snaps of a makeover on social media using Instagram. The caption over one funny face where she’s sporting new highlights read: “The highlight of my life. Blondes don’t have more fun.”

The light-hearted move on Instagram made for a positive response to the intimacy struggles. As ever, through relationships, children and intimate revelations, Ulrika has been a picture of resilience for nearly five decades now.

Ulrika Jonsson’s relationships

In essence, you cannot talk about Ulrika Jonsson’s age and career without talking about her love life. In short, it has been rather eventful. So to chronicle those events, let’s go back to the beginning.

Ulrika came into the public consciousness in the late 1980s as a weather presenter for Good Morning, Britain. She soon branched out into show presenter, and on a personal note, into married life – with cameraman John Turnbull – in 1990. Although the marriage brought Ulrika her first child, son Cameron, in 1994, the marriage did not last. As she revealed, the relationship was doomed by her own admissions of adultery.

At this same time, Ulrika began a nine-season stint as a co-presenter of Gladiators.

Violent abuse, footballers, the end of Gladiators and a daughter

A Manchester United fan, Ulrika’s love life would entangle her in the English football world in the years to come. Her next relationship was with former Nottingham Forest and Liverpool striker Stan Collymore.

This one was also not to be, but for far more harrowing reasons. Prior to the 1998 World Cup match between Scotland and Brazil, Collymore struck Jonsson in a Parisian bar. The incident was witnessed by journalist Martin Geissler, who told the BBC:

“He dragged her out of the bar into a back room, pushed her to the ground and aimed kicks at her head.”

“She was lying on the ground screaming and bar staff then grabbed Collymore and threw him out.”

Ulrika’s time on Gladiators ended in 2000 as she entered a new phase of her life. Her next child, daughter Bo, was born in November 2000 via her next relationship with German hotel professional Marcus Kempen.

It was another short-lived relationship, but particularly painful and an unexpected way to end things: six days after Bo (still reeling from heart defects) was born, Kempen walked out on her.

The English national team geared up for another run at the World Cup in April 2002. At that same time, Ulrika was forced to admit to a brief relationship with a fellow Swede, Sven-Göran Eriksson, the team’s manager who had already had a girlfriend at the time.

Another shot at love

Around the same time that the Erikkson matter came to light, Ulrika’s career and love life seemed to prosper. While presenting a 2002 reality television show named Mr Right, she would meet her second husband.

Then a bachelor faced with choosing a girlfriend from a group of women during the show, contestant Lance Gerrard-Wright did not go home loveless after the winner turned him down. He and Jonsson subsequently began a relationship. The couple were married in August 2003, and she gave birth to their daughter, Martha, in May 2004. The marriage, again, did not last, as they split for good in 2005.

Gerrard-Wright is presently Director of UK Business for Inspirational Development.

A new column and a mobile hacking suit

Ulrika’s relationship with Eriksson had just ended, but a new career venture resulted from it. Ulrika was hired to write the aforementioned column commenting on Eriksson’s personal life with The News of the World.

Her candid manner about his personal ways made for compelling reading (even if reeked of slightly too much info). One quip: sex with Sven was “as exciting as an Ikea instruction manual. Putting together a Billy bookcase would have probably left me more satisfied.”

The column ran until 2007, a year after Eriksson’s resignation from England manager role. But curiously, her time with The News of the World didn’t end there. In 2011, she sued the paper as one of several celebrities and public figures ensnared by the phone-hacking practices that led to the paper’s ultimate demise.

Other victims of the News Corporation hacking scandal included:

• Prince William;
• Prince Harry;
• Hugh Grant;
• Tessa Jowell;
• Sienna Miller;
• Wayne Rooney;
• Cherie Blair;
• James Nesbitt.

As Ulrika keeps chugging along, the News of the World, alas, collapsed under the weight of these criminal practices, shuttering its publication for good in 2011.

“If I ever say I’m marrying again…”

After Mr Gerrard-Wright proved to be anything but following her second divorce, Ulrika famously joked, “If I ever say I’m marrying again, will you please shoot me?”

The joke was forgotten though, as she was betrothed to the American Monet in 2008. To be sure, we presently know about how the relationship has turned out and the personal struggles she’s shared. But there are positives worth noting in this space:

• She has talked about the intimacy issues with his permission.
• The marriage produced her fourth child, Malcolm, in 2008.
• The marriage and relationship have by far been her longest.
• Putting aside the aforementioned details about intimacy, Ulrika has spoken glowingly of many parts of the relationship.

“We worked really well as a couple and as parents and as a family, I think it was amazing. It was 100% the reason I wanted to stay in the marriage and keep going.”

Re-emergence on the dating scene

As Bruce from Family Guy put it so eloquently, the adventure begins again for Ulrika Jonsson. Age be damned, the mother of four is back on the dating scene this month.

Writing for the Daily Mail in October 2019 (what a month!), Ulrika announced she would be on First Dates Hotel on Channel 4, going out on what amounted to her first date in 15 years. And if you’ve read this far, you’ll no doubt be aware: she was candid about the encounter.

“This low ebb manifested itself in fairly predictable ways. I wasn’t sleeping well and I’d lost all interest in my appearance.

“Schlepping around the house, always in the same frumpy uniform of leggings, vest top and loose, long-sleeved cardigan — all black — I didn’t feel remotely attractive. So why on earth might anyone else see me that way?

“Meanwhile, my sense of self, not just as a person, but also as a sensuous being, was non-existent. ‘Sex, how do you spell that?’ I’d joke with friends, having done the deed only once in the past eight years.

“Picturing myself across a restaurant table with someone new for the first time in 15 years, waiting to see if any sexual energy might ignite between us, felt beyond daunting. The thought of emotionally and physically interacting with another man in order to have sex with him filled me with terror.”

A homelife shared with her fans

As Ulrika has cut back on media appearances this decade, she has alternatively found new ways to stay in the public domain. Through social media, she regularly shares glimpses of her home life in Oxfordshire.

This includes a living room featuring a Persian rug together with plants and Buddha figurines to a sprawling backyard and her two bulldogs (who are also constant subjects of her Instagram feed). A must-follow on Instagram, fans of Ulrika Jonsson’s ageless commitment to revelation remains intact on social media channels.

Finding the strength to strike back at sexism

Ulrika is a committed parent of four in addition to a public figure more interested in a sprawling domestic life than the next day’s headline. But like any outspoken public figure, Ulrika is not without her share of critics. The misfortunes and wrong steps in her love life, in particular, have been a bain of her open persona existence.

Take, for instance, the recent labels of her with the nickname “4×4” (i.e. four children to four different men). In another time, it would seem that such a pejorative moniker would simply come with the territory.

However, Ulrika isn’t standing for it. The nickname (coined during her most recent marriage to Monet and the birth of son Malcolm) has drawn a fiery – yet measured – response from the blonde beauty. As she explained in Best Magazine, she’s remained a committed mother and hinted that such a label wouldn’t be so easily thrown at a man in her situation.

“OK, I’m biologically a 4×4. But plenty of men father children and then disappear, and they are treated like loveable, if randy, old goats.

“Then women like me, whose romantic dreams have fallen apart, but who work hard to provide loving homes for children, are vilified. I never ­abandoned my children. They all live with me. I pay for and care for them.

“As for being irresponsible… having a child isn’t a throwaway thought. It’s the absolute opposite, a child is a ­commitment for life, much more of a commitment than marriage.”

It is a bold and somewhat remarkable defence for the mother of four. Missteps aside, another notion that boosts her case is the amount of notoriety that seemed to come her way following the Eriksson revelations. This despite the fact that he was the one cheating on an existing relationship, not Ulrika.

Nevertheless, critics would rightly contend that the IKEA comments (among others she made in her column in the early to mid-2000s) would be an example of how she played up the matter for all it was worth.

Other notable career achievements at Ulrika Jonsson’s Age

A fun fact for your next pub quiz: before she stepped foot in front of Britain’s television cameras, Ulrika started out as an administrative assistant.

Destiny (more directly, a five-day forecast) called in 1989. Ulrika’s television career suddenly took off, starting out as a weather girl on TV-am in 1989. That same year, she also became a weather presenter for a Swedish television programme, broadcasting from London to avoid a tiring commute.

During her time on Gladiators, she co-hosted with both John Fashanu and Jeremy Guscott from 1992 to 2000. Additionally, there have been several other pit stops in her career. Here are some enjoyable ones worth mentioning.

• In 1991, she co-presented the short-lived daytime quiz show Who’s Bluffing Who?
• That same year, she appeared in the French film, The Annunciation of Marie (1991).
• In addition to premiering on Gladiators in 1992, she also hosted The National Lottery Draws.

International hosting gigs

Ulrika has hosted or co-hosted two major international broadcasts, as well as endorsements for Playtex and panel show appearances with Shooting Stars. On the international scene:

• Firstly, the 1998 Eurovision Song Contest, together with co-host Terry Wogan.
• Next, the 1999 Miss World Pageant with Melanie Sykes.