If you were a Pop Idol fan back in the noughties you may have been whipped up in the frenzy over whether Gareth Gates and Zoe Birkett were in a real-life romance or not.
Millions tuned in each week to watch the hit talent show fronted by Simon Cowell, as a cute, spikey haired Gareth and 16-year-old Zoe navigated being thrust into the spotlight together alongside Will Young and the late Darius Danesh.
Zoe and Gareth seemed inseparable at the time, but whenever the question arose it was all mysteriously hushed up and fans were left questioning what in the world was going on?
Now after decades of speculation, Zoe has exclusively confessed to the teen romance, and the heartbreak that followed, on the Second Act podcast with Ateh Jewel.
“It was cute. It was everywhere. Everyone was like, oh, are they, aren't they? I can confirm they were,” says Zoe, who is now married to Adam Tahir, with whom she shares a nine-year-old daughter Aaria.
“It was good stuff, an amazing time and we were young.
“Imagine being in that little Pop Idol bubble and then going through it with someone who's a very similar age. I was 16, he was 17. Everybody loved him outside of the show because it was Gareth Gates, he had this cute hair and the cute dimples and the little cap and everything.
“And I loved him in the show. He was everything to me at that time.
“We went through all of these first experiences together. We were both from the north with a very working class background. So all these opportunities that were happening, we did side by side.”
But while Zoe wanted to sing from the rooftops that she was in the first flush of love, the management team had other ideas.
At the time Gareth was being pipped for superstardom. Tens of millions of people had tuned in to see him go head to head with Will Young in the finale and he had thousands of women and girls throwing themselves at him.
© WireImageGareth and Zoe were both signed to Spice Girls manager Simon Fuller who had his own ideas of how their image should be managed. And he wasn’t keen to create a younger version of David and Victoria Beckham, far from it in fact, which devastated Zoe at the time.
“The papers absolutely loved it. They followed us everywhere. We couldn't go anywhere without people following him and wondering were they, weren't they? Because he was becoming extremely famous worldwide and management very much wanted him to be a single boy. So there was a lot of heartbreak for little me in the corner being like, okay, I won't tell anybody.”
As Gareth’s fame took off their relationship became impossible to maintain, and after they split, Zoe begged Simon to let her break away from his management company too.
She was so devastated from being sidelined, that she fell head first into another relationship with another Pop Idol star, TV presenter Mark Rhodes.
“I was so heartbroken over Gareth Gates that I was just like this man is wonderful and thinks that I'm fantastic and I'm going to be his priority, and he's going to make me his number one, and he's not going to be looking elsewhere, and he's not going to do X, Y, and Z.
“And it was love. It was a lovely feeling to have that from somebody. And so we very quickly moved in, three months later he proposed and I was like yes, why not?”
However after a year and a half together she came to the sad realisation that she may have been on the rebound and it didn’t feel right to make a commitment.
“He's wonderful, but I just kind of knew he's not my person. And I walked away.”
Despite the heartache, Zoe is thankful for the experience that she went through.
“I'm actually pleased I did it at that age. A lot of the things unfolded that weren’t great, but I had a great experience throughout. I did release a record. I've had a wonderful career and I've worked with some incredible people. And so without that platform, people might not know who I am or give me these opportunities that I've had. So I've got no regrets at all.”
And she even hinted there may be more to come…
“I haven't seen Gareth in a long time. We are both so different and now got very different careers. But it would be nice to do a little Pop Idol reunion with all of us.”
Watch this space!
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