TO millions of viewers he was Ace in TV’s Gladiators but now Warren Furman is back in training – to become a vicar.
This summer, the former bodybuilder, who battled contestants every Saturday in the hit game show in the 1990s, will be ordained as a Church of England cleric.
And standing beside him in St Paul’s Cathedral in London will be his wife Dionne — who is swapping her life as a Virgin Airways hostess to become a vicar too.
Warren, who was engaged to Katie Price for two years, says: “I’m now fighting the good fight and I’ve become a Gladiator for God.”
He sat down with The Sun at St Francis community church in Ladbroke Grove, West London, and revealed why he has swapped his Gladiator’s pugil stick for the pulpit.
Warren, still an imposing figure although he no longer goes to the gym or works out, adds: “As a Gladiator I lived life to excess but my heart was quite hardened.
“I don’t say that celebrity is a bad thing in itself if you are celebrated for doing something great, but I was just some bloke that has pumped himself up for a TV show, and the TV show had ended.
“Something important was missing from my life but now I have found it in the Church.”
Gladiators returns to TV next Saturday, and Warren is looking forward to it.
He says: “It’s great news. As a nation we need a wholesome family show again.
“Everyone spends so much time on their phones and computers in different rooms, so I am all for a show coming back where families can come together.
“I will be cheering on the new Gladiators.”
The show first slammed on to Saturday-night TV in 1992, presented by our very own Ulrika Jonsson and ex-footballer John Fashanu.
More than 16million viewers watched the show, which turned its Gladiators including Michael Van Wijk, James Crossley and Kim Betts into household names as Wolf, Hunter and Lightning.
Viewers loved to see its Lycra-clad stars taking on members of the public in strength and agility challenges in the arena.
The Gladiators fought contenders with pugil sticks — weapons that looked like giant cotton buds — as well as trying to make them fall from suspended rings in the Hang Tough round and blocking their path as they rolled around inside giant hamster-ball “pods” in Atlaspheres.
ITV only planned for the show to run for three years but it was so successful that by 1996 the channel was looking for new cast members, and Warren, then a 24-year-old homeless and jobless roofer, applied.
Formerly a skinny teenager, he had started bodybuilding to look like his film heroes and says: “In the Eighties, muscles were ruling the world.
“Arnold Schwarzenegger was the highest-paid movie star in history and as far as I could see it wasn’t for his acting ability.
“I thought Gladiators would be a stepping stone to Hollywood.”
Once Warren was accepted as a Gladiator, TV bosses sent a stretch limousine to the homeless hostel in Harlow, Essex where he was living and flew him first-class to a training camp in Mauritius with the rest of the show’s muscled-up stars.
He says: “The producer said to me, ‘Here are some Gladiator names but when you choose, choose wisely because you’re going to become a commercially important person’.
“When they suggested Ace I thought, ‘That’s rubbish. A Gladiator needs a scary name, like Warrior or Rhino. Who’s going to be scared of facing Ace?’
“A couple of weeks later they said McVitie’s were bringing out a new biscuit which comes with thousands of pounds’ worth of advertising and it’s going to be called the Ace biscuit. I said, ‘I love that name!’
“I sold out completely but paid for it straight away because they didn’t tell me the strap line was, ‘Ace, the incredibly thick chocolate biscuit’.
“On National Dunking Day, dressed in my Lycra pants, I had to get into a giant tea cup filled with foam in Leicester Square with Kathy Lloyd, the Sun Page 3 girl.”
Being a Gladiator meant Warren was out partying most nights with fans who idolised him.
He says: “I was living my life like Schwarzenegger’s ethic — you only get one life, live it rich, live it fast.
“But nobody had taught me that the more you get of something, the less it satisfies you.
“I didn’t realise I was acquiring a destructive habit, drinking too much, fornicating, having excess of anything I wanted.
“Morally, I was making some poor choices. When everyone is calling you Ace you start to believe it. I started to become conceited.”
In 1997 he got engaged to Katie Price, then going by her model name Jordan, and during their fiery relationship of nearly two years they both sold stories about their sex life.
They finally split up after he accused her of sleeping with the then Formula 1 driver Ralf Schumacher, brother of Michael.
Warren later said he had been in “a club of people who had had a lucky escape by not marrying Katie”, now a mum of five.
He now deeply regrets his actions and says: “It was selfish, It’s not the way I think now. I have great admiration for her. I know how difficult it is being a parent.
“If I see a picture of her in the papers and magazines, I pray that she would know God as I do and realise that her identity doesn’t have to be in altering her body or having operations. God loves who she is.”
He adds: “At the time we were playing games and selling stories about each other.
“Recently I sent a message to her parents to say, ‘I just want you to know I am sorry for my part in it. I hope you will forgive me’.
“Her parents came back and said, ‘We really enjoyed having you around’. It was quite heart-warming.”
The first version of Gladiators ran for 13 series before ending in 2000 after 133 episodes — but no one told its stars it was being axed.
Warren says: “I read it on the front of The Sun. I was at a petrol station and The Sun had a picture of me and a thumb going down.
“Instead of the show’s catch-phrase, ‘Gladiators, are you ready?’ the headline said, ‘Gladiators, you are deady’. I picked the paper up to learn the show had been axed.
“My next call was to my bank manager, because take away the pugil stick and the Lycra, and I had no skills to pay the bills.
“I started going with my brother to work on roofs and people would be shouting abuse up on the scaffold — ‘Ooh, Ace, have you bedded Ulrika?’ It was humiliating.”
In 2000 he met Dionne, a Virgin Airways cabin crew manager and also a Christian.
They now have two children — Bailey, 20, and Anna, 18. While Dionne flew the world, Warren worked as a building site manager.
He felt something was missing from his life and in 2015 he found what he was searching for on a Church of England course.
It led him to set up a charity, Ace Active, which tours schools to spread the word.
On school visits he wears a costume made for Russell Crowe in the movie Gladiator — which he bought for £60 on Gumtree — to explain how the Romans helped to create the Christian church.
Warren says: “Russell Crowe sold his suit for £60,000 so I got a bargain, as it is identical.”
Lockdown meant Warren could not visit schools and Dee’s flights were grounded, so they both decided to train to be vicars.
On July 6 they will be ordained, then sent to different churches to work.
Next Saturday Warren will sit down with his family to watch the new Gladiators and marvel at how the original series changed his life.
He says “I’ve seen clips and it looks fantastic. I’ll be shouting at the telly cheering the new Gladiators.
“I may even get back to the gym. Dee said to me, ‘You have got to get back into shape’, but I say, ‘Round is a shape, my dear’.
“I used to run the eliminator in the show’s Battle Of The Giants. These days I can’t run a bath. If I bend over I can’t get back up.”
