Josie Gibson says a six-word complaint about the kitchen was the moment she knew her relationship with Terry James was finished. In a resurfaced 2019 interview, the 41-year-old recalled how a row over Christmas cleaning turned into the turning point in a relationship she said had already been under strain.
Gibson’s account has drawn attention again because it gives a blunt answer to a question many fans have long had about where things went wrong. She said she had spent four days cooking Christmas dinner and four days clearing up when James told her she had not buffed the sides, a remark she took as the end of the road. “buff your own b****y sides,” she said she shot back.
She said the exchange did not stop there. James then complained about her shoes in the hallway, and Gibson said she told him: “If you don't like it, pack our stuff, we will go.” She said he loaded their belongings into black bags and took them to a house she rents out, after she and her son Reggie moved out of the family home. Gibson and James had known each other for 20 years before their romance began, but by her telling, the breakup crystallised in that kitchen argument.
The wider picture she painted is harsher than a single spat. Gibson said James slept in a campervan in the garden when Reggie was five months old, while she handled the night feeds and he said he needed his sleep. She also said she treated him to a skiing holiday for Christmas and got nothing back, not even a card for Reg, then spent New Year’s Eve in a hotel with her young son.
Yet the split was not as clean as Gibson first made it sound. During lockdown, she and James lived under the same roof again so he could help with childcare responsibilities, a reminder that separated parents can still end up sharing the same space when practical needs take over. By December 2021, she said he had moved out of the home she shared with Reggie.
Gibson has since been plain about where she stands now. In a separate interview, she said Reggie is her biggest distraction and that it would not be fair to pursue a relationship, and in 2024 she added that people often assume she is dating men she is photographed with. “The joke about it is I am so single it's ridiculous,” she said. For now, the unresolved part is not why the relationship ended, but how completely life stayed tangled even after it did.
