Byrne: no ménage à trois with Swinton

Published on Saturday 22 August 2009 19:51

PLAYWRIGHT and author John Byrne has debunked rumours that he is living in a ménage à trois with his former girlfriend, Tilda Swinton, and her new partner.

He said he has been "miscast" as living under the same roof as the Oscar-winning actress, who is the mother of his young twins.

The film world was intrigued when she appeared on the red carpet at last year's Baftas and Oscars with Sandro Kopp, who is 17 years her junior, while Byrne stayed at home in Scotland, minding their children. The 48-year-old actress said Kopp sometimes stayed at their large family home in Nairn, Inverness-shire, when they were not travelling the world together.

But Byrne, 69, who created the award-winning 1980s television series Tutti Frutti, said he was keen to set the record straight.

He said: "I have been miscast as living under the same roof as Tilda and Sandro. I've been painted as a benign eccentric who's living there while some guy's shagging his sweetheart. Why would I do that? Let me put the record straight: no way is it a mnage trois. Neither of us would have had any truck with anything remotely like that. People would like to think that, wouldn't they? Bizarre."

Swinton shed intriguing light on their domestic set-up after scooping Best Actress awards at the Oscars and the Baftas last year. She said: "What is true is that John and I live here with our children and Sandro is sometimes here with us, and we travel the world together. We are all a family."

Swinton and Byrne fell in love in 1989 while making the BBC series Your Cheatin' Heart. By 1990, Byrne had left his first wife, Alice Simpson, and moved from Scotland to London to be with Swinton. After their twins, Honor and Xavier, were born in 1997 the family moved back north. But by 2005 the romance had fizzled out, although they insist they remain friends.