Serene: Stacey with husband Ryan Giggs at the awards last Thursday The confession, made nearly two weeks ago at their enormous mock-Tudor mansion outside Manchester, must have been painful to make and worse still to hear.
But proudly standing by Ryan Giggs at the Manchester United Player of the Year awards last Thursday, his wife Stacey Cooke appeared serenely untroubled.
Her hair was just so, and her lipstick a perfectly executed slash of vampish red.
You would hardly have known that a bombshell had just been detonated under her pretty nose – that her husband was being accused of having a six-month fling with former Big Brother contestant Imogen Thomas.
She was well aware, of course, that all eyes would be on her – and that everyone in the room would know her husband was the Premier League footballer who had taken out an injunction.
It remains to be seen whether she will leave him, taking with her a slice of Giggs’s £25million fortune and their two adorable children.
He swears that the story is not true in many respects.
And the fact is that she is still with him. His Bentley remains unmolested in the garage, and she has not taken the scissors to his collection of Dolce and Gabbana suits.
Ex marks the spot: Ryan Giggs had an intense romance with TV presenter Dani Behr (left) and dated former PR girl Caroline Stanbury 
Celebration: Ryan Giggs with son Zach at Old Trafford after he collected his 12 Premier League winners medal for Manchester UnitedWhy? Well, while the rest of us may think of Ryan Giggs in terms of his public image – as a successful footballer who has been impeccably loyal to Manchester United and so on – it seems that his wife might have long suspected that there is another, darker side to him. Indeed the Imogen Thomas brouhaha is by no means the first time that she has had cause to believe her husband has not been faithful.
Take the start of their romance in 2001. While dating Stacey, a local girl, Giggs was also unable to resist a reportedly simultaneous fling with pillow-lipped It-girl Caroline Stanbury, a blonde who reduced men including Prince Andrew to jelly. Then Stacey became pregnant, and Caroline was history.Perhaps Giggs’s ability to attract and discard women so rapidly should have rung alarm bells for Stacey, a determined cool-headed individual who likes her leather soft and her heels high.
Charismatic Giggs had – in those years – forged a reputation in the bars and clubs of Manchester as a young man who could score as fluidly off the pitch as on it.
One patch of the city – off Peter Street – became known as Giggsy’s Corner in honour of the rumours that this was where he liked to bring girls when they were courting. He started his career as a lothario with an intense spell squiring singer Dani Behr, then at the peak of her fame.
But Dani dumped him for fellow footballer Les Ferdinand, and Giggs consoled himself with models, strippers and an air hostess. One of them claimed in the papers that he was a four-times-a-night lover.
Some of his flings were well known – such as model Rachel Hunter whom he seduced after meeting in 2001 at a sports awards. Actress Patsy Kensit also bulldozed him with chemistry at a film premiere in 1995. He didn’t seem to put up much resistance.
His early years with Stacey were complicated, with Giggs embroiled in a complicated partner swap with Dave Gardner, his one-time best friend. Gardner was, you see, at one point Stacey’s fiancé. But Stacey and Giggs fell for each other, and Gardner was apparently left seriously disgruntled. For Giggs had also dated Gardner’s younger sister, Emma, and she had miscarried the baby they were expecting in 1998.
The view in Manchester was that Emma should become Mrs Ryan Giggs, and some were astonished when Stacey entered the frame – pregnant in 2002.
Their daughter Liberty was born later that year – seven weeks premature and weighing only 3lb. Giggs was said to be so bowled over by the emotions of fatherhood that he proposed marriage to her in the delivery room.
But Stacey seems to have struggled quite seriously to get him to commit – possibly a legacy of his own unhappy upbringing with an absent father.
The wedding, pencilled in for spring 2004, was cancelled.
And the talk of other women was never far away. But, like so many other WAGs, Stacey Cooke learned to live with her suspicions.
It must have been a struggle. She even went so far as to kick him out in 2005 – he was sent to live with his mother after an indiscretion reached her ears. He was seen driving to their home to pick up their daughter and spend time with her, and Stacey confirmed that he had indeed moved out of the house.
‘He denied any wrongdoing but she does not believe it,’ a friend said at the time. ‘She is not sure if a leopard can change its spots.’
Ryan Giggs has earned a reputation as a womaniser, so his fling with Imogen Thomas, pictured yesterday, left, will come as no surprise to some. Wife Stacey Cooke, right, even once kicked him out over an alleged flingDespite this, however, she went on to take him back, have another child with him and marry him in a curiously unromantic ceremony at the Lowry Hotel in 2007.
Giggs seemed almost embarrassed to be tying the knot at the time – there were a grand total of nine guests.
He said in an interview at the time: ‘I have Liberty and Zach now so I am probably as content with life as I have ever been.’
Giggs’s dour public image of recent years masked a continuing appetite for partying – but only in trusted company.
‘Only last weekend when United won the title and Man City won the FA Cup, he was in the Living Room bar with the other players, standing on a table and singing, “There’s only one team in Manchester”,’ said a source.
Medal of honour: Ryan Giggs was given an OBE - Officer of the Order of the British Empire - in 2007 ‘He’s still very much the social leader, always the life and soul of the party. He just makes sure he does it behind closed doors now.’
Giggs’s agent Harry Swales remains amazed by talk of infidelity, saying: ‘I can’t believe it, he’s such a family man.’
The footballer has certainly tried very hard to keep it secret – and he could argue that this has been done to spare his family pain. His children are still young – Liberty is eight and Zach just four.
While there might be a melancholy atmosphere behind doors at their mansion in Worsley, which features a glass tower and an indoor pool, complete with a Welsh Dragon design on the tiles, perhaps it’s not the end for Ryan and Stacey.
One associate of the couple said last night: ‘He still promises that the story is false, and she loves him.’
source:dailymail