FORMER Emmerdale star Matthew Wolfenden has revealed the brutal way wife Charley Webb dumped him.

The actor – who played David Metcalfe in the ITV soap – met Charley on the job and the pair fell in love, getting married and eventually having three children.

But after 15 years together, Matthew has told how Charley ended their marriage while she was on tour with a play.

Matthew, who had just quit Emmerdale and was at home raising the boys, was about to temporarily move to London for a West End play.

He said: “It was Charley’s decision. Charley decided she wanted to separate.

“It was hard, it was a hard time for me. By this point I’d decided to leave Emmerdale. Charley was on tour with a play called Quiz so I was leaving a job I’d been in for 18 years, I’d just been offered a job in the West End, so it was a big change for me.

“I had the kids full time at that time because Charley was out on tour and then out of the blue I got this news that she wanted to separate.

“It was a tough time for me, it was a time of big changes and then this on top of things wasn’t the best news in the world. But things happen for a reason and yeah.

“It was a very very tough time but these things happen and I’m not the first person in the world to have separated from their partner with kids involved.

“It was the fact that the kids were quite young and it wasn’t only a couple of years ago. That was a concern to me. We had to move onwards.”

He added on podcast The Lewis Nichollls Show: “I didn’t expect it at all, it was a big shock. Separation is very difficult when you’ve spent 15 years together, your lives together and everything you own is together – just sorting out.

“Especially when the separation happened when Charley was on tour and I was moving to London after leaving Emmerdale.”

But he also revealed after the initial devastation, the former couple put their differences aside and found a way forward.

He added: “Everything was a bit up in the air for the first few months but we’re very very amicable, we’re still friends and we’ve got kids together so you have to be. We’re always going to have a relationship.

“We had the best 15 years together and we had three amazing kids together. But in terms of co-parenting we decided we’d do a week on, week off.

“We kept our house for the time being so the kids didn’t have to move between houses until they got their heads around it really. We wanted it to be as much of a comfortable transition for the kids as possible.”

And he revealed he’s taken a huge step with his nw girlfriend Heather, who he met while starring in the West End after his split.

Matthew said: “Things do have to come to an end so we’ve just sold our house and me and my new partner have just bought a house so there’s going to be another transition. These thing take time but it’s all good.”