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SECRET ROMANCE
I dated Jet from Gladiators for 7 years before she got married – she said new wife was her first female partner
A MISS England contestant who dated TV Gladiator Jet for seven years has told of her shock at the star’s claims she has just found her first same-sex love.
Sonia Strong said she was flabbergasted when Jet, real name Diane Youdale, told The Sun that her new wife Zoe became her first female partner after they met in a Tesco.
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Yesterday, former Miss Newcastle Sonia followed dog-walking company boss Lisa Nottingham — who said the former TV star proposed to her — in coming forward to debunk her story.
Sonia said: “If Lisa was surprised then I was flabbergasted.
“I didn’t know whether to laugh, scream or cry when I read that Diane was supposedly with her first ever woman.
“The way she told it, it was as if she had stumbled across lesbianism in the cereal aisle at Tesco.
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"But we were in a relationship from 2012 to 2019 so how this latest woman can be her first is beyond me.”
Diane, 53, was one of TV’s biggest stars in the 1990s.
She claimed she had dated only men, including Gladiator Hunter, real name James Crossley.
But she said that all changed when she bumped into 49-year-old Zoe, a teacher in the legal sector.
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Diane, who proposed four months into their relationship, said: “I have lots of gay female friends but I haven’t dated any of them. So Zoe was the first I dated.”
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However Sonia, 39, said that was news to her.
The pair had met when Sonia was 13 and they appeared together in a Peter Pan pantomime in Sunderland.
They reconnected in 2012 when both lived in London.
But Sonia claimed Diane, by now a psychotherapist, was struggling with the end of a relationship with a man.
She said she helped rebuild her confidence, even getting her to choreograph musical shows she was producing.
Of their relationship, she said: “I thought it would be just a fling. But two years in she told me I was her soulmate.”
Despite being loving behind closed doors, even suggesting they get married, Diane refused to go public.
Sonia said: “It began to make me feel insecure. We loved each other and lived together but couldn’t be together in public.
“I was sick of it and by the end of 2019 I told her it was over.”
They remained friends for a while but have not been in contact for 18 months.
Diane went on to date Lisa, 54, of Stockton-on-Tees.
Lisa has claimed Diane proposed but their relationship fizzled out.
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Diane last night claimed her relationship with Sonia had been platonic.
But Sonia, who has a snap of them in bed together, hit back: “It was a full-on, physical, emotional, romantic relationship.”
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