Brian Paddick - Personal Life

Personal Life

Paddick is married to Petter Belsvik. Since childhood, Paddick has known he was gay, but between 1983 and 1988 he was married to Mary Stone in what he called "a genuine attempt to live as a straight man" – "It's what my faith as a Christian expected of me. It's what my parents expected of me. It's what the police service expected of me. Mary was a very beautiful and charming woman. It was a genuine attempt to try and deny my sexuality and to 'do the right thing'." According to Paddick, it was "a fairly conventional marriage" and his former wife said it was "a wonderful marriage". She did not know he was gay. He struggled with his sexuality until towards the end of his marriage in 1988: "I learned the lesson about being yourself before that, and being open about my sexuality was the last piece in the jigsaw. I wasn't open about my sexuality until I was a commander." A November 2003 profile in The Guardian noted: "Mr Paddick is relaxed enough to laugh at himself and told a gay magazine: 'My last staff officer got promoted and went to royalty protection. In his leaving card I wrote, "Same job, different Queen".'" Paddick currently lives in Vauxhall, London, with Petter Belsvik, a civil engineer from Oslo, Norway; they met in a bar while on holiday in Ibiza. They married in Oslo, same-sex marriage in Norway being legalised 8 days before, on 9 January 2009.

Paddick was a contestant on the eighth series of the ITV1 reality television show I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!, which began its broadcast on 16 November 2008. On 1 December 2008, he became the sixth celebrity to be voted off the show. Interviewed by the show's hosts Ant & Dec after leaving the jungle, he explained his reasons for participating: "For a long time I've been doing serious stuff. Thirty years in the police and running for mayor. It's all bad news that they want me to comment on. So I thought why not come and do something trivial. ... It's the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, anything after this is a breeze."

In 2008, Paddick was ranked number 101 in the annual Pink List of influential gay and lesbian people in Britain published by The Independent on Sunday, down from number 83 in 2007.

In 2010, he appeared on Channel 4's alternative election night special of Come Dine With Me alongside Edwina Currie, Rod Liddle and Derek Hatton.

Speaking about his gay marriage in Norway as part of the 2010 Liberal Democrat debate about equal marriage for gay people, Paddick said: "The real impact of, the symbolism of it, the importance of it, didn't really strike me until we stood in front of the judge in the courthouse in Oslo, and she said ... we're here today to witness the marriage of Brian and Petter. And that was an intensely moving experience. We really feel, my husband and I, that we are really equal because we are married."