Kyle Walker bought this hand grenade, took out the pin and handed it to Lauryn… he blew up his family
UH-OH. Hell hath no fury like a woman who feels discarded and disregarded.
Old-fashioned “kiss and tells” are few and far between these days because everyone’s emoting their every thought and utterance on social media, but back in the day, when they were still a thing, it was rarely about the money.
It was about the sting of being ghosted and gaslit by the person you thought you had something special with.
Some were so wounded that they would ask to be interviewed and happily hand over any messages and photos that “proved” they were once, er, loved.
So when Man City and England star Kyle Walker attempted to downplay his relationship with Lauryn Goodman — with whom he fathered a second child while married to wife Annie — it was inevitable he was playing with fire.
Particularly when he claimed “there was no relationship” with Lauryn, referred to the conception of their first born as an “episode” and that she wouldn’t even know how he takes his coffee.
Within hours, she had metaphorically spilled hot tea all over him, claiming they enjoyed “a long-standing, intimate, loving and affectionate relationship”, and that he was a “pathological narcissist” who likes “flat white, no sugars please”.
Yesterday, wife Annie’s sister Sian retaliated that, actually, “he has one sugar, Nestle Coffee Mate and semi-skimmed milk” but, to be honest, sticking with a coffee bean analogy if I may, Kyle is clearly an Excelsa — “complex, tart and fruity” — and evidentially, the existence of two small children suggests that, mutual beverage knowledge aside, he and Lauryn were intimate on some level.
Hell, he even admits that their second child was conceived after he visited her in London on his way to have an operation for a ruptured groin. Now that’s dedication.
Lauryn says she eventually messaged Annie to tell her about the second child (she already knew about the first) because “she needed to know the truth”, but Kyle now says he knew “something was coming” when Lauryn discovered that Annie was pregnant with their fourth child.
Was this because he’d been feeding Lauryn the age-old refrain of, “my wife doesn’t understand me and we don’t have sex any more?” Her reaction would suggest as much.
But Kyle’s interpretation is that she “had me trapped in a corner . . . she was in a position of control, where if she asked me to jump, I would respond, ‘How high?’
“This was to meet growing and unreasonable demands in return for not destroying my family.”
Tawdry business
Hmmm. Yes, Lauryn’s call to Annie over the festive period is what caused the very public explosion we’re all now witnessing.
But Kyle is the one who bought the grenade, took the pin out and handed it to her. In other words, he’s the one who has destroyed his family with his choices, no one else.
Yet, according to his spokesperson, “he’s instructed lawyers and will not be making any further comment on the wild and untrue stories [Lauryn] is promoting in the media in search of self-publicity and financial gain”.
Oh dear. Whatever the truth behind the whole tawdry business, no one should forget that at its heart are six young children who deserve better.
Kyle has spoken of his pain at missing living with his three children with Annie, and no doubt they will be missing their dad too.
He’s lucky he is allowed to see them for scheduled handovers, because she’s a “fantastic mum” and “doesn’t want to take that away”.
She’s putting the needs of her children first. At 33, it’s time that “narcissist” Kyle puts his own wants, needs and desires to one side and does the same.
- I’M off to fulfil my lifelong dream of seeing the gorillas in Rwanda, so see you in a couple of weeks. Something tells me that we might have the plane all to ourselves . . .
FASHIONISTAS are insisting that white tights are back in fashion.
Oh puh-lease. Absolutely NOT – unless you’re under five and walking down an aisle holding someone’s bridal train.
But they’re also insisting that “granny cardigans” are back in fashion too.
Now you’re talking. For some of us, they never went away.
JUSTICE WASN’T SERVED
TRIPLE killer Valdo Calocane must be thanking his lucky stars he didn’t commit his heinous crimes in the US.
For while Kenneth Smith was being executed very painfully in Alabama for the murder of Elizabeth Sennett, Calocane was allowed to plead guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility because of his history of paranoid schizophrenia.
Meaning he’s now in a high security hospital, rather than prison, which a former worker describes as being a comparative “holiday camp”.
Calocane, 32, fatally stabbed Nottingham university students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar as they walked home from a night out in June last year.
He then stabbed school caretaker Ian Coates to death, before using his van to mow down three pedestrians.
For the record, I don’t agree with the death penalty. But if Calocane had committed his crimes on the streets of Nottingham, New Hampshire – which abolished the death penalty in 2019 – then chances are he’d be facing life in one of those hardcore “Supermax” prisons.
But here, he can go to “gym, arts and crafts” classes and could be eligible for release in just three years.
Little wonder that Barnaby’s distraught mother Emma feels that “true justice has not been served.”
LAB GEM SO APT
THE owners of Belgian jewellery company Kimai boasted on Dragon’s Den that the Duchess of Sussex has worn one of their pieces.
“How did you manage that?” asked Dragon Steven Bartlett.
“Just cold emails,” they replied.
But lest we fear that Meghan’s “diamond” freebie was up there with the Koh-i-Noor, it turns out that Kimai’s range is “lab grown” – aka fake.
How apt.
Harry’s dumb a Dolly
TRAITORS winner Harry Clark pulled off the incredible feat of being treacherous and likeable at the same time.
The baby-faced assassin from Slough, Berks, told host Claudia Winkleman right at the start of the hit show: “I’m playing stupid Harry.”
And it worked, because his fellow competitors clearly underestimated him.
As the mighty Dolly Parton once said: “I’m not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I’m not dumb . . . and I also know that I’m not blonde.”
DEAD OVER ‘LIKES’
BRITISH base jumper Nathy Odinson has died after his parachute failed to open while jumping from a 29-floor tower block in Thailand.
What was the point of this “daredevil” feat?
According to the block’s security guard, “they were making video content for social media.
They had done this before and they knew it was not allowed”, because it posed a risk to pedestrians below.
Seriously? Not only is Nathy’s poor family now mourning his loss, but the woman who saw him hit the ground, the security guard, paramedics and police officers who attended the scene, will all have suffered the trauma of seeing the damage to his body.
And it was all for social media likes. Words fail me.
THE two protesters who threw pumpkin soup at the Mona Lisa may well have a point about the right to “healthy and sustainable food” in France.
But the reality is that the masterpiece is covered in glass, so no damage was done and it will be poorly paid cleaners who have to mop up the mess.
STAMP IT OUT
BUSINESS Secretary Kemi Badenoch has fired Post Office chairman Henry Staunton after just one year in the job over concerns about governance following the Horizon scandal and “the entire business model”.
What a shame the forthright Ms Badenoch wasn’t around when the PO’s woeful former CEO Paula Vennells presided over the false prosecution of more than 700 sub-postmasters because of faulty software.