Anne Robinson reveals 'most shameful thing of her life'

Anne Robinson recently got candid and opened up about the time when she lost custody of her daughter Emma.

For those unaware, the renowned British journalist and TV show host lost custody of her two-year-old daughter, Emma, to her ex-husband Charles Wilson in 1973. The extremely disturbing and traumatizing incident of her life happened during her bitter divorce due to her severe struggle with alcoholism at the time.

Robinson appeared on Lorraine Kelly on Saga's Experience is Everything podcast, where she shared that she found alcoholism “the most shameful thing of her life” and finally got rid of it in order to rebuild her relationship with Emma.

Now, the mother-daughter has a close bond, and it grew stronger when they lived together during the COVID-19 lockdown.

Robinson said, “My mother was amazing, but she was also a very bad drinker. And if you grow up with someone with a drink problem, the one thing you're absolutely determined is that you won't do the same.”

“And of course I did. I developed the most appalling drink problem in my 20s. It was so bad that when I was divorcing my husband, he fought and won custody of Emma, which was the most shameful, and remains the most shameful thing, in my life.”

“I really had to pick myself up from that and somehow start again from quite a low rate. I think the shame is quite heavy. And I realised I had to stop drinking, which I did in the next couple of years. 'Slowly she was mine again, but it was quite a tough start… we had to start again when she was five or six, to really build a relationship which is untouchable now and has been for years and years and years,” The Weakest Link star explained.

It is pertinent to mention that Charles Wilson was working under Anne Robinson at the Daily Mail and tied the knot in 1968; however, their marriage could not last, as they ended up annulling their marriage in 1973.