As Adam Peaty is rumoured to be feuding with his family after his mum was seemingly snubbed from fiancee Holly Ramsay’s posh hen do, The Mirror explores their polar opposite upbringings and the theories surrounding the ‘row’
One is the son of a Lidl caretaker and nursery manager, while the other is the daughter of a internationally famous TV chef worth £152million. Needless to say, Adam Peaty and Holly Ramsay’s childhoods were worlds apart.
With the families now reportedly at war after Adam’s mother was painfully absent from Holly’s star-studded hen party at Soho Farmhouse, sources close to his mum have claimed Adam’s decision to shun his family appears to relate to his idea of chasing fame.
The insider claims that Adam’s mum, Caroline, 59, believes the six-time Olympian believes his working-class family are “not good enough” to match the Ramsay family. It’s even claimed that Caroline wasn’t invited to Holly’s hen as she “might have stuck out a bit”.
READ MORE: Adam Peaty’s family claims he is ‘ashamed’ of them after banning mother from weddingREAD MORE: Adam Peaty’s mum and Holly Ramsay in another relationship blow after wedding fallout
The youngest of four children, Olympic swimmer Adam, 30, was born in the market town of Uttoxeter, Saffordshire, to nursery manager Caroline and her former bricklayer husband Mark. He has proudly spoken at length about his working class roots, and the sacrifices that his mum made to help him achieve his dreams.
Despite working full time, she would rise at 4am everyday to take him to training. The family forwent holidays as cash was so tight. Caroline’s first ever flight was to the Rio Olympics to watch her son.
“My mum worked on the other side of Stoke, I trained in Derby. That is a big journey,” Adam previously told the Guardian. “I would get up at 4am, my mum would drive me to the pool for 4.40am in Derby. She would wait for me for two hours, drive back, have some breakfast, then she would be in the house for 50 minutes, then work all day 8am to 5pm, God knows. Then come back to Derby, wait another two hours, collect me. She wouldn’t get home until 8pm or 10pm.”
At one point, Caroline fell ill. With money in short supply, they had to rely on the generosity of friends and family to keep Adam in the sport. “He almost gave up swimming because he’d had enough,” she once told the Daily Mail. “I was quite poorly for a while so it was really difficult getting him to the early morning sessions.
“When he started doing all his national competitions, the petrol costs were really high. Our street all clubbed together and we used to hold barbecues or Christmas parties. Our neighbours, Angela and Keith, used to organise a raffle and everyone would donate prizes. All the money raised went towards Adam’s swimming. We didn’t have a holiday for four or five years but everyone was brilliant.”
But while they might have been short on cash, they were never short on love for their high-flying boy and would hang his medals on the curtain pole until they started to weigh too much. His beloved grandma, Mavis – a former biscuit factory worker – was the only one he trusted to was his GB kit because she ‘does very small loads and keeps the colours together’.
Adam lived in the family home until he left as an adult to be closer to his training HQ in Loughborough, where he met girlfriend Eirianedd Munro at university. They welcomed son George in 2020 before splitting soon after.
Now rumoured to be worth between £1million and £4million, for Adam, the tight family purse strings always chafed. “You do feel on the back foot if you don’t come from a rich family or a family who are already involved in sport… You’re starting off at a massive disadvantage against those kinds of people,” he once said.
“As an amateur you’re up against people with money who can afford physio or therapists, and these kids turn up with all the kit. Not everyone is equal. But if anything, it made me more determined to make the most of what I did have and give 110 percent in training.”
And taking an apparent swipe at his humble roots, he told of how he’d rage that others had more than him. He told the Guardian: “That relationship with suffering has driven me since I was a kid. I am working class – but millions of people in this country are also working class.
“They live paycheck to paycheck and can’t have luxury things. I was in a larger family with two brothers and one sister, so you had to fight for what you had and because I was the youngest I always had hand-me-downs.
“But that gives you an appreciation for the things you do have. I now really respect everything I have earned, such as my house. I’ve got a roof over my head, I can feed my family and enjoy the luxuries if I need them.
“Now, becoming a dad, I want to be the best role model possible to George to show him that if you want something, you get it by working hard. Don’t become lazy and ever think anything will be handed to you.
“That’s my upbringing in a nutshell. I don’t want to sound too harsh on my parents because they did so much for me, and gave me so much, but there were also so many kids that had so much more and that’s spurred me on.”
A lack of cash certainly wasn’t a problem chez Ramsay, where Gordon and wife Tana raised their six-strong brood in the lap of luxury. They grew up alongside the Beckhams, splitting their time between a £6.9million mansion in Bel Air, a £7million Victorian pile in London, and a £7.5million beachfront property in an exclusive enclave of Cornwall.
Son Jack, 25, received a £10,000 Rolex from his dad on his 18th birthday, and he told Channel 4 documentary Born Famous that he wouldn’t know what to do without the trappings of wealth.
He said: “I have grown up in a bubble. I’ve never had to fight or do anything for myself. I don’t know what I’m like without everything I’ve got.” Holly joined her dad at Elton John’s exclusive Oscars viewing party in 2017 and is a regular at VIP Formula 1 events.
They grew up with a nanny in the form of Gordon’s sister Yvonne, who moved in with the eldest children were young, along with her then 10-year-old daughter, Sophie.
Speaking about the husband and wife-to-be, a source told the Daily Mail they believe that Adam has ‘changed’ after getting a taste for the finer things in life. “She’s from a celebrity world and his parents are not, and his ego and self-importance has just got bigger,” they said.
“He’s not the lovely boy next door that we all remember him as. Adam has changed and he is almost a bully.
