- guardian.co.uk, Wednesday July 23 2008 00.01 BST
- The Guardian, Wednesday July 23 2008
A British actor who took her battle against her millionaire husband to the internet, posting videos that lambasted him on YouTube and which gained an audience of millions, has been ordered to leave her New York home by a judge who has ruled her behaviour was "spousal abuse".
Tricia Walsh-Smith, 52, whose previous claim to fame had been bit parts in the Benny Hill Show and a play she wrote called Bonkers, had the YouTube videos professionally filmed in the Park Avenue apartment she has shared for 13 years with her husband. In them she claimed Philip Smith, a Broadway producer, 77, was trying to evict her and leave her penniless.
In a six-minute rant, she railed against "male chauvinist pigs" and exhorted "woman warriors" to flock to her cause. She also revealed embarrassing details, notably that he had a stash of the impotence drug Viagra despite the fact they never had sex. The videos attracted more than 4m hits on YouTube.
Smith sued for divorce on the grounds that the videos were a form of spousal abuse, and this week Judge Harold Beeler of New York state supreme court agreed.
He said Walsh-Smith had embarked on a "callous campaign to embarrass and humiliate her husband and his daughters. Smith has been publicly humiliated to an unprecedented extent." Walsh-Smith must quit the apartment within a month. Smith in turn is bound to pay her $750,000 (£375,000) under the terms of their pre-nuptial agreement. "I'm terribly sorry it came to this, but I'm obviously happy with the result," Smith said. Walsh-Smith insists she has no regrets about her dalliance with marital meltdown via the web: "It brought attention to my plight and the plight of a lot of other women."
