The sad news of the marriage break-up of Amandaland star Peter Serafinowicz and his Coupling star wife Sarah Alexander has rekindled memories of Ms Alexander’s previous relationship. 

The break up with an actor also caused headlines… because that partner was more than 40 years her senior.

Sarah, 54, was only 25 when she was first spotted dating Gerald Harper, then 68, in 1996. 

He was well-known to 60s and 70s TV audiences as the suave star of Hadleigh, and before that Adam Adamant Lives!, an Edwardian gent who finds himself propelled into London in the swinging sixties.

When first snapped together by a pH๏τographer for a red-top newspaper, the pH๏τo appeared under the headline Flirty Old Men (the other was legendary lothario Peter Stringfellow).

A pᴀsser-by told the Sunday People of Alexander and Harper: ‘They were super-glued together! They were all over each other and didn’t care who saw them.

‘Funnily enough, the young lady was making a lot of the running and kept grabbing him to French kiss him – it was quite a display.’

The sad news of Coupling star Sarah Alexander’s divorce has rekindled memories of her previous relationship with Gerald Harper. She was just 25 and he was 68, when they started dating in 1996 (pictured in 1997) 

When Sarah, whose big TV break would come in Coupling with Jack Davenport in 2000, moved in with Harper in his large Notting Hill house, friends’ eyebrows were raised, especially as she is eight years younger than her new boyfriend’s daughter, confusingly also named Sarah.

But they refused to allow the generation gap to get in their way. Friends said Harper was ‘absolutely bereft’ when Sarah left him for Serafinowicz in 2002.

At the height of his fame Harper was TV’s most eligible bachelor in ITV’s Hadleigh, which ran from 1969 to 1976.

He was perfectly cast as urbane English toff James Hadleigh, a wealthy, handsome playboy who lived in a mansion in the West Riding and ran the local newspaper.

He told the Express in 2006: ‘There wasn’t that much to watch back then, so we had huge audiences. 

‘The top brᴀss at Yorkshire Television didn’t think Hadleigh would work, though, and placed us very late at night.

‘When they realised they were wrong, they apologised. I tore up my contract and said: “Shall we start again?”

‘Not only did I get more money, I was given the loan of a country estate for a year complete with staff. I lived like a lord. It was very glamorous.

‘I was a TV star on my own terms and for the best part of 20 years I virtually didn’t have a day off.’

The Mail revealed this week that Serafinowicz had separated from his wife of 23 years, Alexander. The couple have two children, a son and a daughter (pictured in 2017) 

Age has never held Harper (now 94) back. Approaching his 75th birthday, he flew to the Masai Mara in a light aircraft and rode horseback across Kenya’s Masai Mara game park.

On the return leg, the plan crashed through a hedge and ended up on its side.

He recalled: ‘I turned to the pilot and said: “Do not bother with the next venue, my good man. Just get me the hell out of here to Nairobi and civilisation!” Enough was enough.’

A former pupil at Haileybury public school, he originally planned to become a doctor, but caught the acting bug while doing his National Service and won a place at RADA.

Alexander has enjoyed a varied comedy career, appearing in Green Wing, Smack the Pony, Armstrong and Miller and The Worst Week of My Life.

Serafinowicz and Alexander, who have been married for 23 years, have two children, a son and a daughter.

Serafinowicz, 52, played Johannes Van Der Velde, the extrovert South African boyfriend of social climber Amanda, played by Lucy Punch in Amandaland, which has been commissioned for a second series.

The Liverpool-born actor, whose Hollywood roles include the voice of Darth Maul in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace and Garthan Saal in Guardians Of The Galaxy, is the new host of the American game show Million Dollar Secret, billed as Netflix’s lavish answer to The Traitors.

Serafinowicz, who once had his own eponymous television comedy show, is also famed for his impressions of Donald Trump, whom he redubbed in a sᴀssy camp voice, which became an internet sensation.

Serafinowicz, 52, played Johannes Van Der Velde, the extrovert South African boyfriend of social climber Amanda (Lucy Punch) in Amandaland