19 November 2024, 23:37
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Jermaine Jenas’ wife has spoken out for the first time about her football star husband’s sexting scandal.
Ellie Penfold said the news of her husband sending “inappropriate messages” to two female colleagues at the BBC was “incredibly difficult”.
Former Spurs player Jenas was sacked by the BBC in August over ‘inappropriate messages’ to two female colleagues.
Jenas, 41, lost his jobs on The One Show and Match of the Day after the accusation emerged.
Speaking this week, Penfold told the Sun: “It has been an incredibly hard and difficult time for myself and my family. My only focus has been on our children…
“Now I just want to move forward. Naturally this has been hard for me but my only concern has been our children and that will not change.”
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In a video on Instagram in September, Jenas himself posted: “It’s clearly been a difficult period for me but one that I’ll definitely grow from. We’re human beings, that’s what it is.
“You’ll learn from it. You’ll become a better person. Those are the things that are important in life.
“None of us are perfect and we’ve just got to find a way to keep moving forward, look after our babies and our families in the best way we possibly can.
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“That’s something that I’ll be trying to do. Mainly [I wanted to say] thank you, really. It’s been really nice, the level of support you’ve shown me.
“It’s been a nice eye-opener as well. I kind of lost connection with my followers along the way and it’s been nice to reconnect with a lot of you who’ve been kind enough to send me messages.
“I’ve tried to get back to as many of you as I possibly can and I will continue to do so.”
“Hopefully I’ll be back talking about what I love, which is football,” he added.
The father-of-four joined The One Show in 2020 as a stand-in co-host following the departure of Matt Baker and he was made a permanent fixture the following year.
Jenas had been a regular pundit on sports programmes Match Of The Day and Match Of The Day 2 and a presenter on BBC Radio 5 Live.
He had been widely regarded as a natural successor to replace Gary Lineker as host of Match Of The Day, but was noticeably absent from the first episode of the new season.
On his departure, a BBC spokesperson previously said: “We can confirm that he is no longer part of our presenting line-up.”
Jenas has criticised how his former employer handled his sacking and has said he will be speaking to his lawyers about the situation.