Shane and Coleen remained on good terms following their split ( Image: Unknown)

Coleen Nolan has spoken of the moment she discovered her husband Shane Richie’s affair through a little known tech hack.

The Loose Women start was married to the Eastenders heartthrob for nine years before their union came to an end – after both played away.

The Mirror reports how things started out rosy for the pair, when Celebrity Big Brother star Coleen – who turns 58 today – first met Shane in 1986.

They planned to marry in a huge ceremony in 1990 but eloped to Florida at the last minute when their plans spiralled out of control.

Sons Jake, 30, and Shane Jr, 34, soon followed, along with a martial blessing at a church when Coleen’s father fell ill a few years later.

Coleen and sons Shane, left, and Jake, right, attend The Nolans Aftershow party in 2009 ( Image: WireImage)
Then in 1996, Shane moved to Manchester to play Danny Zuko in Grease, leaving Coleen and their two children down South.

And in an extract from her 2009 autobiography, Coleen said that was when she first had an inkling something was amiss.

Attending an after-show party for one of Shane’s musicals, her spidey senses started tingling when she spotted an attractive brunette woman across the room.

Clad in a ‘skin-tight white dress’, Coleen said the woman ‘just stood out’ to her.

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“It must have been female intuition because that turned out to be the girl Shane had an affair with,” she said.

In his own autobiography, Rags to Riches, Shane admitted cheating on Coleen with the dancer and actress in question, Claire Taylor.

He said: “I was lying so much that I couldn’t remember which story I’d told to each of them. And I’d lie to cover up the lies.”

A suspicious Coleen tried riffling through Shane’s pockets to confirm her suspicions, but her search proved fruitless.

Then one day, the proof she needed landed in her lap when she realised Shane’s phone calls were being recorded on a computer he had bought for her.

“Unbeknown to me, the computer Shane had bought me for Christmas was picking up all the calls to the house,” she explained in her autobiography, Upfront and Personal.

“When I investigated further, while Shane was abroad, I worked out that there were 33 calls all recorded on the computer’s hard drive. Curious, I scanned through them.”

One alleged call apparently began with Shane saying, “Hello Princess” – his pet name for Coleen.

She breathed sigh of relief until she heard the next sentence which confused her.

According to Coleen, he asked: “‘Are you in between shows? What time do you finish? I’ll try and come round.'”

Recalling her thought process, she continued: “What show? I hadn’t been in a show for ages. I could only hear what Shane was saying but there was no way he was talking to me.

“‘I really miss you,’ he continued, in that affectionate tone I knew so well.

“Caught red-handed!”

The couple eventually split in 1999, and Coleen went on to marry musician Ray Fensome and have daughter Ciara, 19, but they divorced in 2018.

Shane married actress Christie Goddard in 2007 and they have three children – Mackenzie Blue, 14, Lolita Bell, 12, and Romani-Skye Angel Shelley, nine.

And in 2012, Coleen told the Daily Star how her divorce from Shane eventually brought her peace.

“I’m in a much happier place now than when I was married to Shane – I don’t have to worry about what he gets up to any more,” she said.

For Shane’s part, he told the Guardian there was ‘no excuse’ for his behaviour, especially as he was the host of wedding show, Love Me Do, which promoted monogamy.

“What I did to Coleen was unforgivable and I could never apologise enough,” he said.

“And I was pulling the wool over the public’s eyes, so what do you think was going to happen?”

Shane also credited Coleen for keeping things amicable between them. Their divorce was settled out of court and Shane later attended the christening of her third child.

However, the betrayal wasn’t the first within the marriage – Coleen also admitted that at one point, she played away too.

After the birth of their second son, Jake Roche, Coleen said she felt ‘unattractive and non-existent’ and when Shane started on Grease in 1993, she went to Weymouth with the Nolan Sisters for the summer season.

There, she met a keyboard player who made no secret of his interest in her.

One day back at the townhouse some of the musicians were renting, the mystery man leaned over and kissed Coleen over a cup of tea.

“As I kissed my musician, it was like a sexual awakening,” she wrote in her autobiography.

“Adrenalin was pumping through my body. I knew what I was doing was terribly wrong, but I was literally shaking with exhilaration. ‘I am still attractive’, I thought to myself.”

But the guilt was all-consuming, with Coleen describing it as “one of the most horrendous times of my life.”

She confided in good friend, star of The Chase, Bradley Walsh, who she claimed hinted she wasn’t the only one up to no good.

According to Coleen, The Chase star – who once dated her sister Bernie – said: “I’m not being funny, Coleen. I get on great with Shane, but you don’t need to feel as guilty as you do. He’s not so innocent either.”

The affair lasted five weeks and ended when the show did. Driving back home, she realised she was still in love with Shane and wanted to make a go of their marriage.

*Coleen Nolan’s Upfront and Personal: The Autobiography is available from online book stores.