Caroline Peaty is a woman who likes to share her pride in the milestones and achievements of all her children.
Her Instagram account, on which many of her followers are fans of her youngest son, the Olympic gold medallist swimmer Adam Peaty, is a warm, unfiltered gallery, full of photographs and words of affection for not just Adam, but her two older sons, Richard and James, their sister Bethany and all her grandchildren.
One post that stands out is a stylised definition of the word ‘family’. ‘Life’s greatest blessing,’ it reads. ‘A group that dreams, laughs, plays and loves together. Those whom you can always count on. Always present not only in the good times. The most precious gift.’
How very different she’s feeling today.
Breaking her silence to the Daily Mail on the bitter rift that has emerged this week between her family and the one her son is marrying into, 59-year-old Caroline meets me in a hotel just outside her home town of Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, and lays bare the extent of her pain.
While she comes across as a strong woman, Caroline is truly devastated by recent events and weeps as she contemplates what lies ahead.
‘I know it’s the end,’ she says. ‘But please, the message I want Adam to hear is no matter what happens in the future, please know I love you, your dad loves you, you can come home and talk to me at any point.
‘There’s nothing you’ve done that I would not forgive. I love you so much.
‘I hope your marriage is a good one, I don’t wish any ill on you and I want you and Holly to have a long and happy marriage, like your dad and me. The reason I’m speaking out is I want all this to end.’
By ‘this’, she means the escalation of accusations and bad feeling which has seen her barred from her son’s wedding to Holly Ramsay, daughter of celebrity chef Gordon, at historic Bath Abbey on December 27.
Breaking her silence to the Daily Mail on the bitter rift that has emerged this week between her family and the one her son is marrying into, 59-year-old Caroline meets me in a hotel just outside her home town
Adam’s mother (centre, pictured with husband Mark and son Adam getting his OBE) firstly didn’t attend Holly’s hen do at Soho Farmhouse
Adam Peaty is understood to be hunkered down at his future father-in-law’s home as the family feud sparked by his imminent wedding to Holly Ramsay intensified on Thursday evening
In normal circumstances, the day would represent another one of life’s precious gifts – a time of family celebration and unity.
But Adam’s parents – Caroline and her husband Mark – along with various other family members, are no longer on the guest list and have also had invitations withdrawn from Boxing Day drinks with the Ramsays before the big day.
Their exclusion follows a devastating family bust-up that exploded into the public arena this week in the wake of Holly’s very glossy hen do last weekend, to which Caroline was not invited.
At the semi-detached home in Uttoxeter where Adam, 30, grew up, the family have been grappling with a deeply upsetting rift.
Meanwhile, over in the Ramsay camp, it seems battle lines are being drawn.
Caroline is acutely aware of how different her world is from that her son now inhabits, and the family are said to be worried sick about the power and influence of the Ramsay family.
‘He’s in Gordon’s clutches,’ Caroline says. ‘I can’t help but feel like they are pulling him away from me. Their family is very insular.’
The words she leaves unsaid are that she feels on the outside.
The first signs of a rift appeared on Sunday when Holly, the 25-year-old middle daughter of Gordon and his wife Tana, shared a series of carefully curated snaps on Instagram of her hen party, at the exclusive members-only venue Soho Farmhouse, in Oxfordshire.
In one image, the glamorously attired bride-to-be beams with delight, crouched down in front of the rest of her 12-strong posse of hens, which include her mother, Tana, her mother’s best friend Victoria Beckham, sisters Megan (a police officer) and Tilly (a budding chef) and even Adam’s sister Bethany.
But not Caroline.
Tana Ramsay, Holly Ramsay, Adam Peaty and Gordon Ramsay at dinner
Caroline Peaty and Adam on ITV’s Good Morning Britain in 2017
Former nursery manager Caroline, it transpires, was at home looking after Adam’s son George, five, the little boy he had with his previous partner, artist Eirianedd Munro, from whom he split in 2022, nine months after his appearance on Strictly Come Dancing. He met Holly after getting to know her younger sister Tilly on the show.
On her way home from dropping George off with his mum, in Birmingham, Caroline says she reached rock bottom.
‘I was crying all the way home,’ she told me. ‘I got home and told Mark that for the first time in my life, I felt I didn’t want to live.
‘That’s how low this has made me. I’m a strong woman and I can get through anything, but this has broken me.’
Caroline was ‘uninvited’ from her son’s Christmas wedding to Holly Ramsay at Bath Abbey
Holly is pictured at her hen do at Soho Farmhouse with her mother and Victoria Beckham among the guests
No wonder Caroline’s sister, former lawyer Louise Williams, took to Instagram to fire off a very public volley of criticism at Holly.
Her post stated: ‘@hollyramsayy I’m so glad that you had a great hen do. As a bride, you deserve that. However, as a person you were divisive and hurtful towards a woman who I have loved and continue to love deeply.’
It closed: ‘You have inflicted a hurt on my sister that will take a very long time to heal if ever.’
How different things might have been. For Caroline tells me that when she first met Holly just before the Paris Olympics last year, she was immediately put at ease.
‘We had a really good time,’ she says. ‘We both shared confidences that will remain confidential.’ One thing Caroline did share was her own anxiety that her son was pulling away from his family.
‘I remember her words ‘You’ve got him back now, he’ll always be part of your family’.’
Then, last September, Adam delivered the news of his engagement. ‘He told me he had found his soulmate,’ says Caroline. ‘And I was so happy. As a mother that’s what you want, isn’t it? To see your children settled.’
The engagement party – at which Holly showed off her £23,000 yellow diamond ring – sowed the seeds of what was to come.
Wider family on the Peaty side, were not invited, which felt like a slap in the face to a woman for whom family is everything. Caroline sent a message to Holly: ‘I told her, ‘you know how important family is to you, as it is to me. My sisters are not coming to the party, they have been there all through Adam’s life…’ ‘
She wrestled over the wording. It was, she insists, polite, diplomatic.
‘But Adam didn’t take kindly to me sending that message.’
When she spoke to Gordon, after the speeches at the party, she assured him ‘there was nothing horrible in those messages’. But as the big day drew closer, tensions increased.
Adam Peaty’s father Mark failed to attend his son’s stag party after a bitter rift led the star to ban his mother Caroline from his wedding, the Daily Mail can reveal
Adam and Holly’s feud with his family has reached fever pitch after claims of threats of violence against the couple were reported – as their very public row escalates even further
Adam, who’d generously offered to pay for all the mother-of-the groom trappings – her dress, shoes, nails, hair – said she’d need four dresses for the whole event, yet ruled out her favoured cream outfit, which Caroline wanted to pair with navy accessories.
‘He told me ‘Only a bride wears white,’ to which I replied, ‘It’s not white, it’s cream.’
She has returned the dress, but kept another gold two-piece along with a matching fascinator and shoes that cost her £452. ‘Do you know how I raised that money?’ she asks. ‘I sold some things on Vinted.’
Since then the relationship has gone from bad to worse.
In fact, Caroline tells me, she’s barely seen her beloved grandson George – with the exception of looking after him when Adam went on his stag do, to Hungary, last weekend – another pre-nuptial event that didn’t pass without drama.
When Adam flew back into Manchester Airport on Sunday evening, he was met by five police officers, reportedly because of fears he might be assaulted.
It is alleged he had been receiving threatening messages from his brother, builder James, 34, who was arrested on Tuesday on suspicion of harassment and questioned by police for two days before being released on conditional bail.
It’s emerged that while Adam’s father didn’t join his son’s stag do, future father-in-law Gordon took centre stage during the trip to Hungary (pictured with Gordon’s wife Tana last month)
Adam, 30, is due to tie the knot to his influencer fiancée, left, at Bath Abbey on December 27, with guests including David and Victoria Beckham, right
Holly was clutching a ‘Bride’ phone case when she broke cover on Thursday morning for the first time since her feud with fiancé Adam Peaty’s family came to light
James, who’d helped his younger sibling carry out renovations on his home in Kegworth, Leicestershire, near to his Derby training base, was due to be a groomsman at the wedding. But James had been upset, it is understood, about comments Adam made in his book The Gladiator Mindset, which was published in 2021 and in which he wrote about James ‘having demons’ and problems caused by both his brothers being in with the wrong crowd.
‘Living in the same house with their addictive behaviour put a lot of pressure on all of us,’ he wrote.
He went on to write about ‘Jim’ pausing his ‘addictions’ to watch him claim his first Olympic gold and then being inspired to address his demons. ‘He’s now a talented builder and a brilliant father and has left the drugs in the past,’ Adam wrote. ‘Anyone who knows Jim will tell you what a professional, kind and warm-hearted person he is.’
Since that stag do drama, Team Ramsay has swept into action. On Thursday, the Ramsay family publicist Jo Milloy, who was Victoria Beckham’s long serving PR until 2018, arrived at Adam’s house in Kegworth for a crisis meeting, at Gordon’s behest.
The Ramsays are keen to steer the narrative away from the undercurrents of snobbery towards the Peaty family, and have instructed expensive law firm Harbottle and Lewis, in a bid to stop the onslaught against them.
A source close to Adam and Holly said: ‘This feud is heartbreaking from both sides. But the reality is Adam sees his mum, Caroline, to be enabling his brother’s actions rather than pushing him to deal with his demons.’
But Caroline says: ‘Adam will not back down, nor will Holly. Adam rarely says sorry, he has a very black and white view.’
This, she says, is part of what makes him the champion sportsman he is, his laser focus.
Yet the strain has also caused friction between Caroline and daughter Bethany, who was at Holly’s hen do.
Mark and Caroline Peaty at the engagement party of Holly and Adam
The couple celebrate Adam’s Olympic achievements for Team GB
Adam’s aunt Louise exposed the heartbreak over her sister being left off the guest list last weekend by hitting out at Holly in a public Instagram post
As a Peaty family source confirmed: ‘Now Bethany is siding with her brother and his new celebrity family.’
A more distressing saga of family disharmony is hard to imagine – made all the more painful by the contrast of the unity that bound the Peaty clan when Adam powered his way to the first of three Olympic gold medals in 2016.
It was Caroline who made so many sacrifices to get her son to the Olympic starting block.
As Adam’s father Mark doesn’t drive, it was Caroline who would get up at 4am each morning to take him from Uttoxeter to training in Derby. She would then wait there for two hours, before driving him back again and going out to do a full day’s work as a nursery manager. She would repeat the taxi exercise in the evening.
She is mortified at the comments of some outsiders, who suggest she is looking for repayment for all the early starts and work that went in to Adam’s early swimming career.
‘There’s nothing further from my mind,’ she insists. ‘I did what I did because he is my son. I didn’t do it for any other reward than to see my son happy.’
With the wedding fast approaching, it is beginning to look like it will be a Ramsay-heavy affair.
Adam credits both his fiancée, and his Christian faith, with giving him peace after the collapse of his relationship with Eirianedd – who remains close to the Peatys – and a subsequent breakdown.
He has clearly forged quite a rapport with his prospective in-laws. ‘He just inspires me to be successful,’ he said of Gordon in an interview last summer, going on to describe the wider family as ‘very supportive, very welcoming, very loving. The family values are very similar to mine’.
That, however, does not appear to have extended to bringing the two families together.
Holly, who like Adam, has spoken openly about her struggles with her mental health, has been to Adam’s family home on just a few occasions.
Caroline was warm and welcoming towards Holly, and wished her a happy birthday on Instagram.
‘We are looking forward to the year ahead and to you officially becoming part of our family. We have shared some wonderful times already and here is to many more.’
‘Holly completes you,’ she said on a post celebrating Adam’s 30th birthday.
There are now just six weeks to go before the wedding. Six weeks for Adam to change his mind – although Caroline doesn’t hold out much hope. She will still give the couple a gift – ‘it’s a decent present’, she says – having selected one from their extensive wedding list.
She will send a card, too. But she adds: ‘I don’t know if they will even open it.’
Poignantly, she adds: ‘If he changed his mind, I would go. I want to go to Bath, to go into the abbey, to watch him get married.
‘I love him, he’s still my little boy.’
Caroline Peaty received no payment for this interview. She asked that the Daily Mail make a donation to 4Louis, a charity supporting those affected by baby or child loss (4louis.co.uk) and to Yess, a mental health and well-being charity, based in her home town, of which Adam is an ambassador (yess.uk).
