Jackie never lost Faith

A husband and wife enjoy the late summer sunshine in their country garden. It is a peaceful scene; the view from their house gives out over open fields and the established plot is surrounded by tall trees and neatly chosen planting.

He reads a newspaper, while she, a strikingly beautiful blonde of 60, tends the garden. A couple of retired greyhounds snooze nearby. This harmonious idyll, enjoyed by Adam and Jackie Faith at their farmhouse in Tudeley, near Tonbridge, Kent was the surprising final chapter of their extraordinary love affair.

Extraordinary in that not only did Faith do his utmost to wreck his marriage by his compulsive womanising, but that when he did finally come to his senses and put his philandering days behind him, the woman whom he had hurt more than any other was prepared to take him back.

For, in a tragic twist to Faith's sudden death on Saturday from a heart attack, after 35 turbulent years of married life which had driven the couple to bankruptcy and separation, they were at last looking forward to growing old together.

Faith was delighted that, seven years after announcing their separation, he had been able to persuade his wife to take him back and the couple were reconciled last year.

They had made a fresh start at a charming, rambling farmhouse, and there Jackie took charge of interior design while Faith contemplated ways of bouncing back from his bankruptcy, which was declared last year after the £32 million failure of his business venture, the digital TV Money Channel.

A long-time business associate told me last summer: 'It is very obvious when you go to the house that these are two people who absolutely belong together.'

Faith had been determined to win back the stunning woman whom he first spotted on the arm of fellow pop star Cliff Richard, and in one of his last interviews he said admiringly of the willowy former dancer: 'I haven't changed my opinion of my wife in 37 years. Jack is one of the all-time lookers.'

Jackie agreed to stay with the pop star, actor and businessman despite a series of devastating blows to their marriage - Faith's repeated infidelities, wildly seesawing financial circumstances and the heartbreaking deaths of three babies.

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Indeed, the story of Adam and Jackie Faith is one in which love, against all the odds, endured.

She never stopped loving him, not even when he left her in 1995 and embarked on a single life in London. And he never stopped loving her, not even during the two-year passionate affair with Chris Evert which destroyed Evert's marriage and very nearly did the same to his.

The story begins in 1962 when Faith, who was born Terence Nelhams-Wright, became famous overnight at 19 with his recording of What Do You Want? His chart success led to hundreds of one-night-stands but soon he was feeling bored and unfulfilled.

All that changed when he met Jacqueline Irving after a Sunday concert in Blackpool. She was on Cliff Richard's arm, but he couldn't take his eyes off her. A few months later, he saw her again, this time with Beatle George Harrison.

Despite his popularity with the opposite sex, he couldn't think how to approach this vivacious, stylish, successful young woman.

Their paths crossed again when he was booked for a spot on the Mike and Bernie Winters show, and she was present as a dancer.

He recalled in his 1996 autobiography: 'A feeling of teenage anxiety, embarrassment and nervousness swept over me. I felt ridiculously shy, yet couldn't keep my eyes off her. I kept craning round to look at her, hoping, yet almost fearing, to attract her attention. I needn't have worried. She ignored me completely.'

He asked a friend to invite her out to dinner - and a message was sent back that he would have to ask himself. The answer, delivered with a show of indifference, was 'Why not?'.

Brought up in a working class family like Faith's, Manchesterborn Jackie was every bit as driven as her husband-to-be. She had faked her way into a dance audition at 14 and, although lacking any formal ballet training, she had become a sought-after fixture in a dance troupe. The couple were married in 1967, and almost immediately their union was tested by a series of terrible blows. First, Jackie miscarried twins. Some time later, she gave birth to her only son. The baby, named Heathcliff, was a day-and-a-half old when he died.

'I wasn't going to call him Heathcliff, but Jackie wanted to,' Faith said. 'I had to register him when we lost him, and I thought I'd better do what Jackie wanted.

My attitude was: "Let's get on and have another one." For a woman, it's different. Losing a baby at any stage leaves an emotional crater that never, ever goes.'

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Soon after, in 1970, Jackie had a little girl, Katya, who was the apple of her father's eye. He began to spend time with her after a serious car accident and fell in love with family life.

But for all that, Faith was a restless spirit. He remained addicted to fast cars and what he called 'carnal mileage' with available women. In 1982 he began a two-year affair with the tennis player Chris Evert. The betrayal was astonishing: at the time, he and Jackie were in the throes of a serious financial crisis, and had just been forced to move house and sell most of their portfolio of property.

Jackie stood by him, saying she didn't mind if they ended up in a caravan together.

But Faith repaid her loyalty with betrayal. He travelled all over the world for secret assignations with Evert, until eventually in 1984 their cover was blown.

Jackie hadn't suspected a thing until she saw the headlines, and was devastated. Faith quickly ended the affair, and was left to contemplate how deeply he had wounded his wife.

He was under no illusions about how wrong he had been. 'Jackie had shown me nothing but love. She'd cherished and supported me in my worst moments and I repaid it by throwing her love back in her face,' he said.

He spent the years that followed trying to make amends, and counted himself 'lucky' that she didn't give up on him then and there. 'I couldn't live without Jackie and Katya,' he said. 'I never stopped loving Jackie all through the affair with Chris. Although I didn't deserve to be allowed back into her life, Jackie took me in.'

The next crisis came in 1994, when Faith was appearing on stage in Alfie. The play, about a heartless, womanising Cockney, could have been written for Faith, and its bleakness plunged him into a serious mid-life crisis. Unable to control his depression, he and Jackie quietly agreed that they should lead separate lives.

When, in the following year, Jackie suffered a serious heart attack, Faith immediately went to her side. The attempt at reconciliation failed, however, and he set up home in London.

'Me living on my own has got nothing to do with Jack, it's all to do with me,' he said at the time. 'It's because I'm 56 and going through the male menopause.'

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For Faith, this meant a continuation of his philandering ways. But Jackie was coolly unmoved. 'I don't feel threatened,' she shrugged. 'I don't think my husband is looking for a wife. He's got a wife - me. I don't think he wants to marry again. We are not divorced and we have no plans to divorce - it has never been discussed.

'When you've been with someone for 30 years they are your family. I know young women find Adam incredibly sexy. But when you've tidied up for someone, picked up their socks and looked after them, you see them differently. He knows I love him absolutely, but whoever he decides to see is his business.'

They continued to see a lot of each other at the nine-bedroom home in Sundridge, near Sevenoaks, where they had lived since 1986. Birthdays, weekends and Christmases were spent as a family, and gradually Faith's appetite for the single life died.

'As you get older, your priorities change,' he explained. 'Some men are great at treating women properly, but most need to put a few miles on the clock before the motor that drives them moves from below to above the belt.'

He became a permanent fixture at Jackie's side once more.

'Everyone who meets Jack knows they are with someone special,' he said just after they separated. 'She is incredibly artistic; someone who cannot let her eyes fall on an ugly sight. She's given me 35 years of living in beautiful houses.'

He later said of Jackie and Katya: 'They are the two people in my life I listen to and believe. Once you are a family, you are always a family, and once you are friends there's no reason to stop being friends.'

Always driven, and always suspicious of the navel-gazing beloved of other actors, Faith did not often dwell on his good fortune to have found a wife like Jackie - patient, forgiving and loving.

'I've never smelt the roses,' he confessed. But he added: 'My dream is - and always has been - to be content with one woman.'

Although now cruelly deprived of the chance to savour that late-found contentment, Faith surely knew that in Jackie he achieved his dream in the end.