Romesh Ranganathan has opened up about how his focus on comedy career almost wrecked his marriage.
The Weakest Link presenter, 46, shared that he and his wife, Leesa, had to work hard at ‘being really in love again.’
He explained that his marriage suffered because he poured all his energy into his career, leaving very little time for his wife and three children.
Speaking to Gabby Logan for her podcast The Mid-Point (MUST), he said: ‘I lived up to the ‘delivered very little,’ stereotype. You are in and out. Often I would be knackered from working or being on tour.
‘And I’d come back in and just not be very good as a person. My chat wasn’t very good. I would just slump on the sofa.
‘You can say you’re tired, fine, but you need to be making a bit of an effort and that definitely slipped.’ He sighed: ‘The truth is you get caught up in stuff. You’ve got to appreciate the person who is at home more.
‘There have been months. if not the best part of a year, when you are talking to each other for functional reasons. ‘What’s happening with the kids tomorrow…’ and those are all your conversations are.
‘This is what happened to Leesa and I. We stopped investing in our relationship.’
His revelation comes just a year after the couple renewed their marriage vows with a big celebration at their £3m Sussex home.
However, Romesh admitted that they faced challenges before that, indicating that their relationship wasn’t always smooth sailing.
He continued: ‘Going fine isn’t good enough, really. You are not having a relationship.
‘There was a time when we had to get back to being really in love with each other. Not that we weren’t ever in love with each other, I have never not been in love with Leesa and I hope she hasn’t not been in love with me.
‘But I feel like there have been times when the relationship has been a relationship in name only.’
Despite the difficulties they faced, Romesh shared that his wife has never suggested he should give up his job.
‘Even if times were hard, and it did go wrong for a while, she has never said ‘you need to stop’.
He said they worked on their problems and decided to find solutions.
‘We did a lot of reading – we would talk about things, we would do to try and spice things up. I am completely and utterly in love with Leesa and I hope she is with me,’ he explained.
The comic, whose mother appeared regularly in his BBC travel series Asian Provocateur, was previously a maths teacher and head of sixth form at Hazelwick school in Crawley, where he had also been a pupil.
It was there he met his wife, a fellow teacher, and they married in 2009 before going on to having three sons; Theo, Alex, and Charlie.
It comes after Romesh recently clarified rumours about his professional life during an appearance on BBC’s The One Show, where he addressed speculation about taking over the children’s program Art Attack.
He firmly stated: ‘I’m not bringing back Art Attack, what I have done though is been subjected to terrible levels of online abuse. People going to me ‘How dare you try to replace Neil Buchanan?’
‘The main reason is that I don’t care about talking about my shows, I just want to say to the camera, I am not doing Art Attack. I’m not replacing Neil Buchanan, I respect what he did.
‘I would never step on his legacy in that way! Please stop at’ing me, alright.’
