Actor and singer Robson Green has graced our TV screens for many years with his various appearances. The 62-year-old star has previously featured in Casualty, Soldier Soldier and Grantchester, making him a familiar face on television.
Some may recognise him from his chart-topping duo Robson and Jerome or his love for fishing showcased in shows like Robson Green’s Weekend Escapes. Born in Hexham, Northumberland, Robson was raised in Dudley, a mining village in North Tyneside.
He has two sisters – Dawn and Joanna – and a brother named David. Here’s what we know about Robson Green’s life, his most significant roles, how he dealt with “losing everything” when tragedy struck and his divorces.
The early career of Robson Green and his breakthrough
Green was born in Hexham, Northumberland on December 18, 1964 to pit worker Robson and cleaner and shopkeeper Ann Green. Inspired by jets flying overhead, Green joined the Air Training Corps at age 16, but left after two weeks at an officer training camp, reports the Mirror.
Green worked as a draughtsman at Swan Hunter’s shipyard and later formed his own band, Solid State, in 1982.
Green had a passion for acting and appeared in productions at school and at the Backworth Drama Centre, where he spent one night a week. His first role came in a film about life in Thatcher’s Britain before he made his name in BBC’s Casualty.
He went on to play fusilier Dave Tucker in the drama series Soldier Soldier and sparked his music career with Jerome Flynn.
Green’s rising star power led to a successful negotiation with ITV for roles in various dramas including Touching Evil, Grafters and Reckless. He later starred as clinical psychologist Dr Tony Hill in the crime drama Wire in the Blood, and appeared in comedy drama Christmas Lights, Rocket Man, Waterloo Road, Being Human and Strike Back.
The story of Robson’s impressive music career.
Before securing major roles in popular shows like Casualty and Soldier, Soldier, Robson spent seven gruelling years working in regional theatre. It was here that he met future music partner Jerome Flynn in a taxi en route to work.
The pair kick-started their music career after a rendition of Unchained Melody on Soldier Soldier proved so popular that viewers demanded ITV release the song as a single.
Their song topped the charts, as did I Believe/Up on the Roof and What Becomes of the Broken Hearted/Saturday Night at the Movies. At the peak of their musical success, the duo even stopped Pulp from reaching Number 1 with their Britpop classic Common People in 1995.
Their debut album sold 1.84 million copies and their second one, Take Two, was also a hit, selling 1.13 million copies. Despite being offered millions for a third album, they chose to concentrate solely on acting.
Divorces and his pledge never to marry again
Green’s personal life has seen its share of headlines, beginning with his marriage to occupational therapist Alison Ogilvie in 1991, whom he met through director Andrew Gunn. The couple parted ways in 1999 amid rumours of Robson’s four-year affair with PR executive Pamela McDonald.
It was during his time recording Unchained Melody with Jerome Flynn that Robson encountered his second wife, former model Vanya Seager, who at the time worked as Simon Cowell’s secretary. Their son, Taylor Robson Green, was born in April 2000, and the couple married the following year at Cliveden House in Buckinghamshire.
Despite years of happiness, Robson and Vanya’s relationship came to an end, culminating in a divorce in 2013. Speaking to the Daily Mail, Robson reflected: “Vanya and I just grew apart. I don’t blame it on the career. It’s just we were different and we didn’t develop together. My mind went in one direction, hers in the other.”
Currently, Robson is in a relationship with Zoila Short; the couple resides in Hexham, Northumberland, maintaining a low profile but occasionally appearing together on the red carpet. In a 2023 interview with The Times, Robson shared insights into their relationship, indicating no plans for marriage: “No, I’ve done enough of that. We’re very happy together”.
Robson made a frank admission about his “car crash” relationships on ITV’s Robson and Jim’s Icelandic Fishing Adventure in 2016, as he discussed his struggles with substance abuse. “I was enjoying the awards, I was enjoying the parties, I was enjoying the drinking and everything else that went with fame,” he confessed.
“But my relationships were a car crash. I started having real problems with fame and alcohol and drugs”.
Robson Green ‘loses everything’ in flood
In a heartbreaking revelation, Green shared how his 350 year old home was completely ruined – along with all of his cherished belongings – in a devastating flood in 2015. He disclosed that he had lost “everything precious and personal” during the disaster at his residence in Hexham Northumberland, situated right on the banks of the River Tyne.
Speaking to Radio Times, he said: “I live in an old ferryman’s cottage that’s 350 years old, and I love it. I’ve got Hadrian’s Wall to the north and there are pheasants and deer in the garden every morning. But in 2015 my house was under seven feet of water, destroyed in a flood. Everything precious and personal in my life, just washed away. It was very painful, I was devastated. Not only were there salmon going down the Tyne that day, my three-piece suite was, too.”
He subsequently informed the Mail on Sunday: “It was the perfect storm. There was a massive amount of rain, a spring tide, and at the same time the Kielder Water dam had to release 20 cubic metres of water a second to prevent it bursting. I’m right on the apex of where all this water met, and a huge surge swelled up straight through my house.”
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