Terri Dwyer Official Website

There’s no need to worry if you live in number 36 on Syston’s Wanlip Road and a car inches past with its driver craning her neck to see inside. If the woman has a pearly smile and a pretty face, it’s not a burglar casing the joint, it’s model-cum-actress-cum-TV presenter Terri Dwyer taking a nostalgic look at her old home. After that, the tabloid-friendly “ex-Hollyoaks babe” will probably be nipping off to Today’s Catch for a bag of chips swimming in vinegar.

“I love that chip shop!” gushes Terri. “They do the best chips anywhere. It’s really lovely as well. They follow my career from a distance and always ask how. . . Oh. That sounds a bit rubbish,” she says, interrupting herself. “It’s not an ego-massage or anything like that. They just like to know how I’m doing. I like catching up with people. It’s like… Dr Hurwood was my doctor in Syston. I like that. I like remembering that as I drive past the health centre. I’m a village girl at heart, even where I live now. I’ll always come back to Syston. I’ve still got friends and family there.”

Her Wreake Valley roots may run deep, but Terri’s neighbours nowadays are the nouveau riche and famous of Cheshire’s swanky footballer belt. Not that Leicestershire’s least starry star is letting the posh address go to her head. As we speak she has just dropped the Christmas empties off at the bottle bank and is en route to the local Tesco with husband, Sean, and their 10-month-old son, Caiden. The first episode of Terri’s new afternoon DIY show, 60 Minute Makeover, went out half-an hour ago on ITV. “Anorak that I am, I did watch it,” Terri confesses cheerily. “It’s got a lot of energy and I am happy with it. Well, as happy as anyone can be watching themselves
on television. It’s a bit like listening to yourself on the answering machine. You always hate it.”

With 30 episodes of the five days-a-week series already in the can, and a major role in a new daytime ITV programme to be announced next week, 33-year-old Terri is as busy as she’s ever been. “I think I’m like any working mum,” she says. “You always wonder whether you should be doing this job or that job. I went back to work when Caiden was only four months old. I did worry about whether it was too soon. It’s never easy. Fortunately, I’ve got a great support network. My husband’s family are close to us and we have a nanny two days a week. Caiden is a really lovely little boy. He’s by far the most successful thing in my life. He’s my priority, but I always think a happy mum is a good mum. I like being at work.”

The journey from Syston school girl to daytime TV and the green acres of Cheshire was one long, mostly happy accident, according to Terri. There was no long-term plan, no carefully plotted stairway to stardom. After going to
Roundhill College and Melton Upper School, she took a year out to do modelling work. “Much to my father’s disgust,” she giggles. “Anyway, I started earning good money and I was still doing it four years later. I didn’t want to do it for the rest of my life. It became quite soul destroying, really. I’d be stood there in my bikini and you would have a photographer stood there saying: ‘Darling your legs are far too fat’. I was18 and a size 10.” After a spell as a continuity announcer on children’s television, Terri decided to audition for a new teen soap called Hollyoaks. “Never in a million years did I think I would get it,” she says. “I only really went to keep my friend company. We thought we would go up there, have a nice meal and make a day of it.”

Three auditions later and she was Ruth Benson, a soap sexpot who would be seen by five million viewers three times a week for six years. Not that she thought it would last. By her own admission, Terri was so wooden at the beginning it’s a wonder the man from Cuprinol didn’t come along to varnish her. “I spent the whole of the first
year expecting to be sacked,” she says, “but I got my head down, I worked hard, and I did get better. Phil Redmond (the show’s producer) must have seen something in me because he kept me on and he gave me a part in Grange Hill last year.” Right now, things are “really, really good”, says Terri. The Grange Hill role – as geography
teacher Miss Adams – has come to an end, but she’s got a “brilliant bloke”, a wonderful little boy and her career as a presenter seems to be on the up.

Life, though, has taught her to take nothing for granted. As much as she loves going back to Syston it’s always
tinged with sadness. “I lost my mum when I was 22 and three years ago my dad died from cancer,” she says. “I don’t want it to sound ‘woe is me’, but I’ve had a lot of heartache in my life. Not a day goes by when I don’t think about my mum and dad. Every milestone in life is always marred by the same sadness. Mum and dad weren’t
here to see my son, they weren’t here to see me get married and they weren’t here to see me on ITV this afternoon. They say it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved. I was loved. Dad was just wonderful. When I lost him my whole world crumbled. I like going back to Syston and seeing the old family home,
but it’s hard as well. You think of the bad things as well as good.”

Intimate and honest, brittle and breezy; it’s a searingly frank admission for anyone to make, particularly when
they’re loading up a trolley in the middle of Tesco. It’s hard to know what to say. Terri, ever the professional,
takes a breath, lifts the mood, and does her own link. “I’m happy where I am right now,” she says. “Today’s good. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? It might be good, it might be bad. You can’t worry too much. It’s been nice speaking to you,” she finishes. “Love to everyone in Syston.”

■ 60 Minute Makeover is on ITV1, at 2pm, weekdays.

Source: Leicester Mercury
Author: Adam Wakelin
Reproduced with kind permission