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Manchester Evening News
Manchester Evening News
Entertainment
Jessica Sansome

Jane McDonald shares plans to step back from limelight amid happy family news after heartache

Jane McDonald has shared her plans to step back from the limelight following her recent heartache. The singer and TV star was left devasted last year when her beloved fiance, Ed Rothe, tragically died.

Ed, a musician best known for being the drummer in Liquid Gold and later The Searchers, passed away in March 2021, aged 67, after a battle with lung cancer. A statement shared via Jane's official Twitter page at the time read: "It is with immense sadness that we share the news that Jane’s beloved long-term partner, Ed, passed away on Friday 26th March. He had been battling lung cancer for the last few months."

Jane later made an emotional return to the Loose Women panel in November where the ITV lucntime show shared a video montage of showing some of Jane's moment on the show over 10 years as well as clips with her late mum Jean before showing her 'Loose love story' with Ed as well as clips of him on the show himself.

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She immediately began to shed tears and in a new interview with Kaye Adam, Jane has said of how she is now: "I'm a lot better than when I was on Loose Women. I can talk about him now and just feel great that I had that amazing time with him."

She then continued to tell Kaye Adams on the How To Be 60 podcast: "And it's funny, we should talk about retiring because he retired at 59. And said, I promise you when you get to this age, you'll see a difference. And I have. So we had lots of plans. And I think that's part of grief as well is that you go through the normal grief and the terrible, terrible time and then you grieve the life that you thought you were gonna have.

"So when he died, he took our future. So I think that is, I've got to have a different life now. And that's taken a bit of adjusting to, but I'll get there. Because that's what do, we get there."

Jane, 59, went on to share how Ed's death has led her to make a decision about her own left and career. "It's a shock when your partner becomes ill," she told Kaye. "And it's just a shock to your system completely. And I think it's made me realise actually, how many summers have we got left. And I want to do so much.

Jane with her late fiance Eddie (Getty Images)

"I want to go on holiday, instead of filming one. I want to you know, I want to write, I want to be creative. I want to have time in my lovely home. You know, and I want to be here for my family. You know, my, my niece is just about to have a baby. And we're all very excited about that.

"And I want to be around, I want to be around for them all just for a while to like sort myself out and then stop working as much as I do. Because I work constantly."

When Kaye asked Jane "are you aware of getting older?", Jane responded: "I'm looking forward to it. Because I can slow down. I've achieved so many things in my life already, that I never thought I would. And I've got a really great circle of friends. So it's time now to have a bit of fun. And I've not really had much fun, because I've worked constantly, constantly for as long as I can remember.

"And I'm not touring next year or the year after. So you've got an exclusive there because they only think I'm only doing one year, but I'm now doing two. Because I want to have a bit of downtime, I'll still be doing all the TV shows. And that's great. You know, I love that. But the touring I found now is harder than it used to be. And, and I'm thinking well, why? Why are you doing it, just have a bit of a break and see how you feel."

She added: "Now I'm getting to 60. The difference now in my tired level is quite quite big. So I'm just gonna put my feet up and watch Netflix like everybody else."

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