Hughie Green - Personal Life

Personal Life

Green met Montreal society beauty Claire Wilson on a cruise liner in the mid-1930s when both were still teenagers. They married in 1942 and settled in Montreal, before moving to London in 1947. The couple had two children, son Christopher and daughter Linda (married name: Linda Plentl). The family lived in a fifth floor flat in Baker Street, London; although with Green's numerous affairs and self-obsession, including taking luxury holidays and spending Christmas often on his own, his children defined it as "highly-dysfunctional."

Claire and Green separated in 1961 and filed for divorce in March 1975 after Green started an affair with Gwen Claremont, the sister of an earlier lover, Pat. Later that year, Claire married Upstairs, Downstairs actor David Langton. After separation from Claire, Green's drinking became more compulsive, while his affairs continued even during the height of his fame presenting Opportunity Knocks. Journalist Noel Botham approached Green to expose him, but Green countered with a lawsuit threat. Eventually the two became good friends.

Botham then became key in two stories in Green's life. The replacement producer for Opportunity Knocks after the failure of The Sky's the Limit was Jess Yates. Green grew frustrated by the lack of ITV's action to remove Yates when he requested and (ironically) leaked to Botham the stories of Yates's affair with the young actress Anita Kay, whose story, published in News of the World, destroyed Yates's career. After Green's death from lung cancer, Botham wrote the exposé story, also in the News of the World, of Green being the biological father of Jess Yates's daughter, TV presenter Paula Yates, a fact she had first learned after the tabloids printed the story (although Green being her father had been an "urban legend" for many years). Thus Green had four granddaughters that he never knew: Fifi, Peaches, Pixie Geldof, Tiger Lily Hutchence.