EMILY PRESCOTT: Top model Erin O’Connor splits from the lover she met on a blind date

She’s just getting her stellar modelling career back on track after a string of health problems stretching back more than two years.

But even as she returns to full fitness, it seems supermodel Erin O’Connor can’t catch a break – as I can reveal that she has split up with her long-time partner, Steve Gibson.

The 45-year-old former face of Marks & Spencer met the Irish businessman on a blind date more than a decade ago, and they have two sons – Albert, nine, and Eddie, four.

But after all her health woes, including a nine-month bout of Strep A, glandular fever and a year of post-viral fatigue syndrome, the model is now keen to join the dating pool. ‘She’s single and ready to mingle,’ one of her friends tells me.

The couple had lived in New York but Erin recently said it was ‘just me and the kids and two dogs. And my lovely sister, who is moving back to Ireland in a year, but for now is helping me with the children.’

Erin O’Connor attends the Miu Miu Select event in London on Thursday, featuring a special curated selection of Miu Miu by Emma Corrin

Supermodel Erin O’Connor and her boyfriend, businessman Steve Gibson, have reportedly split up

Erin – part of the same generation of big-earning supermodels as Naomi Campbell – added that she is enjoying this new stage of life. ‘For once in my life, I’m being in the moment,’ she said. ‘It makes me feel so heady. To be firmly rooted in the present makes me feel like I’m probably drinking in life in a way that I never did before. So for once, I don’t want to control or predict.’

Erin previously dated presenter Jamie Theakston and was linked to comedian David Walliams, but kept her relationship with 6ft 3in Steve secret for some time. She came clean in a 2017 interview, saying : ‘We met on a blind date – terrifying –- the first and last of my life.

‘I had got to the point where I thought I would like to meet somebody tall, with a job that they like, and it would help if they were Irish, because there’s an instinctual shared appreciation of humour. And there he was. We were friends for a while. There was no real romance, which I think is very good… but we got there in the end.’

Erin, who was talent-spotted by industry scouts as a teenager and once described by designer Karl Lagerfeld as ‘one of the best models in the world’, is now the face of British outerwear brand Marfa Stance.

Tattoo shows life is perfect for Charlotte

She recently split from Luke Storey after just a year of marriage, so one might expect Charlotte Freud to be heartbroken. 

But the granddaughter of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch reckons life is so rosy she’s just had the phrase ‘Tout est parfait’ – French for ‘everything is perfect’ – tattooed on her abdomen, right.

I revealed earlier this month the pair had split, with Charlotte doing the modern thing of unfollowing Luke on Instagram and removing all his pictures from her account.

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