When Olivia Attwood finally opened up about splitting with her ex-husband, Bradley Dack, she claimed the end was sudden and swift.
Eight months after the break-up was first announced, in an interview with a glossy magazine, Olivia this week said: ‘When we separated our stuff, that felt like [ripping] the biggest band aid off. It all happened quite quickly.’
But while Olivia has presented the break-up to Cosmopolitan as something that came out of the blue, I can reveal how, behind the scenes, the couple had been dismantling their shared life together months before announcing their split in January.
In fact, property records show the former Love Islander Olivia and footballer Bradley put their luxury Cheshire mansion on the market in September last year, just weeks after romance rumours started to swirl about Olivia and her Kiss Radio co-star Pete Wicks. They had been spotted cosying up to one another on a yacht in Ibiza a month earlier.
The timing of the sale of the five-bedroom, four-bathroom house, suggests plans to sever ties were already well underway long before fans were told about the split four months later.
In a discreet, private sale last December, Olivia and Bradley sold their marital home before publicly announcing the end of their relationship in January.
The curious timing has sparked speculation about exactly when Olivia’s marriage to Bradley began to unravel and at what point she began getting close to the former TOWIE star and her now boyfriend, Pete Wicks.
Earlier this year, Olivia hired a team of PR representatives to lead a carefully orchestrated campaign to maintain her reputation during the breakdown of her ‘marriage’ – more of which later.
Olivia claimed that her split with her ex-husband Bradley Dack ‘all happened quite quickly’
Olivia and Pete Wicks, who have hosted Kiss Radio together since March last year, sparked romance rumours when they went on holiday in August of that year
A wave of briefings from sources close to Olivia appeared to place responsibility for the breakdown firmly with Bradley.
Critics, however, questioned whether the move was simply designed to protect Olivia’s polished public image, amid growing speculation from some observers that the timelines of her relationships with Bradley and Pete may have overlapped.
These rumours were sparked after images emerged of Olivia cosying up to her Kiss radio co-star Pete Wicks on a yacht in Ibiza last August.
Neither Olivia nor Pete has suggested there was any overlap, and both have maintained their relationship only began after her split.
‘There is so much that doesn’t add up about Olivia and Bradley’s split,’ says a source familiar with the star’s PR offensive.
‘She slipped a story in to a newspaper in January but she didn’t tell them that she had already sold her house. It was all told like it had just happened. And Olivia backed that up this week in her interview with Cosmopolitan.
‘But once again she was loose with her facts.’
The sprawling property, located close to Cheshire’s celebrity-packed Golden Triangle, was listed with local estate agents Upton George for £1.35million, a modest increase on the £1.15million the couple paid when they bought it in February 2021, meaning they could have made a profit of just over £200,000.
As part of the 2023 show Olivia Marries Her Match, Olivia and Bradley had a lavish wedding ceremony – but the Daily Mail revealed earlier this year that they never legally married
Estate agents described it as a ‘rare opportunity within Bramhall’s most exclusive gated development’, praising its luxurious finish and enviable location.
The house was also marketed as ‘sophisticated, spacious and secure’, although it had been burgled while Olivia was holidaying in Spain in July last year, an ordeal she later described as ‘deeply distressing’.
Olivia had relocated to Cheshire from Manchester in 2021, embracing life in the North after Bradley signed for Blackburn Rovers, with the pair documenting much of their relationship online and later on television, including their ‘marriage’.
But earlier this year, the Daily Mail revealed that, despite what millions of viewers were led to believe, Olivia and Bradley had never legally married.
The couple famously staged a lavish ceremony at London’s Bulgari Hotel in Knightsbridge in July 2023, with ITV cameras documenting every moment for her show, Olivia Marries Her Match.
To viewers, friends and family, it appeared they had officially tied the knot – even ITV bosses thought that she had legally married Bradley.
But in May, the Daily Mail discovered that the necessary paperwork had never been completed, meaning the marriage was never legally binding.
‘Her split has been a thing of smoke and mirrors,’ says an insider source. ‘But the house sale is proof that she has been very economical with the truth. Perhaps, like concealing the fact that she’d never legally married, she hoped that she could keep her house sale out of the public eye, too.
‘Olivia claims to be so open about her life, but she puts what she wants out there and people are silly enough to lap it all up. She must think her fans were born yesterday.’
Once again, instead of being candid, the 35-year-old reality star sought sympathy in her latest interview.
She admitted her wedding was a sham, but insisted she always intended to get legally married. Olivia claimed she and Bradley soon encountered ‘teething problems’ in their relationship before they got around to filing any paperwork.
Reflecting on it now, she admitted the situation may have ultimately worked in her favour. ‘Where would I be now [if we had signed]? It’s been hard enough untangling our lives,’ she said.
Now public attention has shifted away from Bradley onto her new romance with Pete Wicks. The pair, who spent months insisting they were just close friends, are very much together, with Olivia revealing Pete confessed his feelings shortly after her split from Bradley.
Describing the relationship as effortless, she said: ‘It’s the easiest thing. We’re both in this era where we just want peace and to enjoy life.
‘Personality-wise, I’ve never had a straight man who can go toe-to-toe with me on banter. He is the only one who can keep up. We tick a lot of the boxes that are really important in adult relationships. Pete’s a very rare person. He’s very emotionally intelligent. It’s quite remarkable.’
The relationship marks a dramatic new chapter for Olivia, but it has not been without controversy.
Olivia and Bradley’s romance had spanned more than a decade in one form or another. The pair first got together in 2015 before splitting shortly before Olivia entered the Love Island villa the following year.
On the ITV2 dating show she met Chris Hughes, with whom she enjoyed a high-profile relationship and several television projects.
But after they separated in 2018, Olivia rekindled her romance with Bradley. They became engaged in 2019, built a home together, filmed their wedding series and appeared to have finally found lasting happiness.
Now, with the house sold, the relationship over and both moving on with separate lives, it seems the real ending to their love story had commenced long before the public even suspected there were problems.
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