Inside troubled life of Noel Gallagher’s party queen ex Meg Mathews… £4K benders with Kate Moss to ‘hitting rock bottom’
SHE was a 90s It girl regularly seen falling out of London’s hottest clubs with close pal Kate Moss.
Meg Mathews, now 57, was living in a five-storey house on Regent’s Park Terrace with three wardrobes packed with Balenciaga, Dior and Chanel outfits, and was never seen wearing the same thing twice.
But after she split from her Oasis star husband Noel Gallagher in 2001, just eight months after their daughter Anais, now 23, was born, things went downhill for Meg.
Despite a £4million divorce settlement she was forced to sell her house and eventually checked herself into rehab.
She turned a corner, and recently moved to Cornwall in lockdown after suffering from depression brought on by the menopause.
But Meg’s demons appear to have caught up with her, as yesterday we revealed she was charged with drink-driving after crashing her Jeep into a parked car in Torquay on Friday night.
Born in Guernsey and raised in South Africa and Norfolk, Meg was a teenage rebel, expelled from her public school in Oxfordshire, along with best pal Tabitha – Guy Ritchie’s sister – for being “boy-mad”.
Drinking from age 11, she said downing snakebite and bottles of cheap sherry gave her confidence to talk to lads.
At 17 Meg travelled to London to buy shoes – but never left, moving into a series of Brixton squats and dabbling in drugs, trying anything from Tipp-Ex to butane gas and often going on weekend-long benders.
It was the early 1990s, the time of Britpop, and Meg was a huge fan of Oasis, who had just released their debut album Definitely Maybe.
Noel Gallagher was dating her flatmate, MTV presenter Rebecca de Ruvo, when he fell for Meg, and the pair married in Las Vegas in 1997.
While their marriage seemed stable, Meg has since said being thrust into the limelight was “amazingly difficult” even though she was “blind to it at the time”.
Party planner Meg hung out with the Primrose Hill set, including Kate Moss, Sadie Frost and Fran Cutler, and developed a reputation as a party girl after all-night benders on drink and drugs.
“Everybody would be in the room, drinking all the mini bar, calling loads of dealers – £3,000 later walking down the stairs with the mascara running down my face, a heel broken off my shoe and going home for what?” she previously told The Sun.
“It would be £4,000 later. And for what? The walk of shame. But by the end you don’t care.”
PTSD after divorce
The couple had their only child, Anais, in 2000 but split a year later, allegedly on the grounds of Noel’s affair with his future wife Sara MacDonald, who he met in an Ibiza nightclub.
He later said he made up the cheating claims to speed up the divorce, but heartbroken Meg claimed the bitter split left her with PTSD.
“Everything was public. At the end of the day I did not have the cog or the PR world that that person (Noel) had,” she said.
“I was just the ex-wife. I had nobody. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t have a press agent, wasn’t famous, I just had a daughter.”
In the wake of the split Meg suffered a meltdown, jetting off to Thailand and partying hard, which allegedly annoyed her ex.
Despite a settlement of £4million, Meg’s partying meant she was spending money hand over fist and as clients dropped her, business suffered.
In 2007 she was forced to sell her and Noel’s Regent’s Park home for £3.5million, moving into a much smaller three-bed £1m house in Primrose Hill.
“Regent’s Park Terrace was an amazing, beautiful house but I’m a single mum and I just couldn’t afford the bills,” she said.
Around the same time she checked herself into rehab as her boozing had spiralled out of control.
“I was drinking too much and it wasn’t having a good effect on me,” she told the Daily Mail.
“I was screwing up the whole time over things that I clearly needed to sort out.”
Rock bottom
With Anais to look after, she says, she realised it was time to grow up and stop partying.
“I was in my early 40s when I realised that partying wasn’t for me any more and I had to get myself into a better situation,” she told The Sun in 2019.
“You can’t go on living like that forever, staying up all night, not eating properly, drinking. I had some really great times and I don’t regret any of it, but there comes a time when enough is enough. I don’t want to be a 55-year-old staggering about.”
In rehab, she finally dealt with the hurt of her acrimonious split from Noel, and the bitter war of words that had gone on since.
You can’t go on living like that forever, staying up all night, not eating properly, drinking. I had some really great times and I don’t regret any of it, but there comes a time when enough is enough. I don’t want to be a 55-year-old staggering about
Meg Mathews
“I hadn’t dealt with my divorce,” she admitted.
“I was heart-broken about me and Noel but I couldn’t let anyone see how badly it hurt me so for five years I pretended that it didn’t matter. I had to learn to let all that go, all the anger and bitterness and emotion.”
Noel married Sara, with whom he shares two sons, in 2011, but they split earlier this year.
Meg went on to date millionaire businessman Kris Flynn, who ended up in prison for handling stolen goods in 2004, and Crystal Palace manager Simon Jordan, in 2005.
She was also engaged to London boutique owner Peter Sidell in 2010, but the lavish wedding was called off weeks before she was due to walk down the aisle.
Most recently she was rumoured to have dated influencer Jay James, and said she’s ready to settle down.
“When you’re in your 20s and 30s it’s about sex and ripping each other’s clothes off. Now I want a soulmate, the whole package,” she told The Sun.
“I need to feel comfort and trust and have someone to talk to and laugh with. I lost my desire for a while but I’ve met someone who gave me that excitement I hadn’t had in a long time.”
Menopause and depression
In recent years Meg has used her voice to campaign on behalf of women going through the menopause, after she went through it in her mid-40s.
Launching Meg’s Menopause in 2020, she explained: “It was so dark for me, I was in a really dark place. I had mostly mental health issues with mine – the lack of oestrogen makes you get really bad anxiety and I was very overwhelmed with life.”
After a holiday in California she says she felt “really low… like I didn’t really know what had hit me. I went to the doctor and burst into tears, and got given antidepressants”.
She initially feared her Nineties partying was “catching up with her” but a woman she met at an AA class suggested she was going through the menopause.
“No one had ever talked to me about the menopause. I’m quite a well-read woman, but there was nothing out there – I’d always just had this image of a granny with a walking stick!” she said.
Meg finally went to an NHS menopause clinic and was prescribed HRT, which she says was a life changer.
Booze battle
Following her stint in rehab in her 40s, Meg swore off the booze completely, attending regular AA sessions.
In 2020 she told The Sun she hadn’t touched a drop for three years.
“I don’t do anything now. I don’t smoke, take drugs, drink alcohol,” she said. “I’ve had a little diversion here and there, but I always get back on the horse.”
She also praised teetotal Anais, now 23, for being the polar opposite of her – adding “maybe because she’s seen what it can do”.
She added: “In my teens and 20s I just wanted to go to the pub and get smashed, but Anaïs doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink and doesn’t party at all.”
She also said her addictive personality meant it was “all or nothing” when it came to booze.
“I don’t have alcohol in the house and I don’t give it a thought,” she said. “I can’t just have one or two glasses of wine… going for ‘a couple of drinks’ isn’t in my vocabulary, so I might as well forget that. I’m all or nothing… So I think it’s better that I just don’t have any.”
Sadly it seems the 57-year-old has broken her pledge – we can only hope this is a temporary blip for the former ‘90s hellraiser.