Speaking to The Guardian, he said: ‘I was having thoughts and doing things that made me… f**ked up, for want of a better word. The TV star has now put pen to paper in a new book, Ten: The Decade That Changed My Future, which chronicles his life from finding fame on The X Factor in 2012 up until now. And for the first time he details the reasons for the end of his marriage, admitting he had cheated "years ago" but only told Dan last year.

But sometimes those lives cross over. If you go out for dinner, people are going to come up to you. I just became a massive recluse. I wouldn’t go out. I felt like I couldn’t walk up the street. I felt like I couldn’t go to the pub. But what I’ve learned over the last year is, ‘So what if people come and say hello? Let it happen. Then you can enjoy yourself.’ I’ve learned, actually, the blur between the two ain’t that far off.” verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ Thankfully, there are other options for anyone hoping to catch a TV personality at the Greenhithe shopping centre this autumn. After a few false starts – including an appearance on Katie Price’s ill-fated talent show Signed by Katie Price – it was The X Factor that did it. Once he stepped onto the stage, it was immediately obvious he was a born performer, if not a born singer. “You get a lot of blokes that’ll sit there and be like, ‘Oh! I wanna be the male Lady Gaga,’” he told the cameras, standing in a queue of thousands of other hopefuls. “The difference is I could actually be.” The crowd loved him, Gary Barlow hated him, and he got through to the next round. Then the one after that. Several more auditions and one sob fest with Nicole Scherzinger later, he was on the live shows. Rylan Clark auditioning for The X Factor in 2012 (Photo: PA)He smiles, flashing his teeth – not the blindingly white, oversized veneers he got in 2013, and had chiselled out last year, which we’ll get to later, but a pretty dazzling set nonetheless. Rylan said he then went into "self blame" mode and felt his life was over and spent time hiding at his mum's house. He writes: "And for the first time in thirty two years I felt I couldn't carry on no more. What's the point I thought. I'd lost what I thought was everything, the one thing I always wanted. A man I loved. A family of my own. And now it was gone. And so I tried to end it." I felt I couldn’t carry on no more,” the 33-year-old writes in the book. “‘What’s the point?’ I thought. I’d lost what I thought was everything, the one thing I always wanted. A man I loved. A family of my own. And now it was gone. And so I tried to end it.” Speculation then began as to why he had pulled out of his show before his split was rumoured. Rylan, 33, later confirmed the separation in a statement which said: "Following reports about Dan and I spending time apart, I feel I have to speak out - as the way it is being reported is unfair. I have made a number of mistakes which I deeply regret and have inevitably led to the breakdown of our marriage."

The new memoir begins with that breakdown – “I thought I might as well jump straight in, get it out the way,” he says – and describes in stark, painful detail the worst year of his life. It tells of how Clark woke up one morning and, for reasons he didn’t yet understand, confessed to his then-husband Dan Neal that he had once cheated on him. Things unravelled from there. Neal left him. He stopped eating. He stopped talking. He stopped sleeping. He pulled out of work commitments, including presenting his beloved Eurovision. Then he tried to take his own life. Rylan Clark on Celebrity Masterchef (Photo: BBC/Shine TV)

I was paralysed doing stunts on Harry Potter. It was still the best job in the world 17 November, 2023 Mathew Baynton on the end of Ghosts: 'What the f*** have we done?' 09 November, 2023 Richard Hammond: 'Top Gear wasn't laddish. We weren't misogynistic. We were three nice blokes' 23 October, 2023 In the book, he writes of feeling like an imposter. Does he still feel like one? “I think I’ve always seen myself as the newbie,” he says. “But I’m not the newbie no more. So I shouldn’t have to be polite to that person that’s being rude to me, or brush off a comment from someone in the industry because they’ve been doing it for 30 years. Don’t f***ing come for me. I’m nice to everyone in this industry – I always have been, I always will be. But actually, if you cross me, I will f***ing ruin you.” By the time he started presenting This Morning, he was a consummate professional. Well, the Rylan Clark version of a consummate professional, which means telling presidential candidate Hillary Clinton not to change her grandchildren’s nappies, “or it’s gonna become your responsibility Hill, and you don’t need it, babe”. “She offered me a job, she loved me that much,” says Clark when I mention that interaction. Maybe if he’d taken it, she’d have won. The pair met on Big Brother's Bit on the Side - which Rylan was hosting - in 2015 and they became engaged the following year. Rylan and Dan, an ex-Met Police detective, walked down the aisle in 2016 and kept their relationship away from the public eye. But fans became concerned after Rylan missed several weeks of his radio show. The book is honest to a fault about Clark’s own shortcomings, but skirts around the details of his ex’s behaviour, dropping hints – “It still keeps playing on my mind why he didn’t want to work to fix what we had. Well, unfortunately/fortunately, I found my answers” – without ever going into detail. Was that to protect Neal? “All I’ve ever done is protect everyone else apart from myself,” says Clark. “And do you know what? For the first time, I could easily not protect anyone. But I’ve actually got a bit of class.”

Clark writes about all this with that classic Rylan mix of sincerity and wit. At one point, he writes that he needed to go away to hospital because his mum, who’d been taking care of him, had her own life to live – “admittedly mainly spent down at Lakeside in the M&S cafe”. Later, he pauses to insist: “This is not meant to be a WOE IS ME, POOR RYLAN! BOO HOO HOO story btw” (it’s a very colloquial kind of book). It seems, I say, like he’s wary of being seen as a victim. “It’s not woe is me,” he insists. “It’s not woe is me in the slightest. It’s what happened.” It would be overly simplistic, but not altogether inaccurate, to say that little Ross Clark found comfort in the dream of becoming a star. In an era where reality TV made people bona fide A-listers, it didn’t seem that out of reach. Especially if he wasn’t fussy about how he got there. “I didn’t care what the job was,” he says. “I just wanted the fame.” Anyway. He didn’t win The X Factor, but it got him onto Celebrity Big Brother, a show he had adored growing up. He walked out the winner, and was asked to host Big Brother’s Bit on the Side. It turned out that innate charm doesn’t teach you how to read an autocue. He then sought help and spent time in a mental health hospital. Speaking at an event in London on Wednesday night, Rylan reflected on that time and the Mirror reports him saying: "It is no secret that my marriage broke down last year. And I disappeared for five or six months and people knew when I didn't turn up for work that something was wrong because I am always on f****g telly, you know what I mean?

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Since then, the 33-year-old has gone on to present shows such as Big Brother’s Bit on the Side, This Morning and Strictly Come Dancing: It Takes Two. But now if there’s something I really don’t want to do, I’m going to say no. I’ve learned to be more in control. I’ve not had control for so long, I feel like Britney!’ In the years since, he’s won Celebrity Big Brother, appeared on Celebrity MasterChef, presented This Morning, Ready Steady Cook, Supermarket Sweep, Eurovision, The One Show, Radio 2… enough, he figured, to fill another book (his first, The Life of Rylan, came out in 2016). “Then I went through a breakdown mid-book,” he shrugs. “So it all changed.” The Strictly It Takes Two host said on the Happy Place podcast: "My body did completely shut down. I wouldn't eat. I went through a stage where I couldn't even talk, which for some people might be quite handy. My speech was just slurred. My mum thought I was having a stroke. My body just went. I went down to 9st and I am six-foot-four."

Having my teeth done when I started Big Brother was the best thing I ever did, because everyone was so busy taking the piss out of my teeth, no-one knew I was a shit presenter,” he says. “By the time they got used to my teeth, I could f***ing host the show, and I could do it well. So the old ones served their purpose.” If you, or anyone you know, needs help dealing with mental health problems, the following organisations provide support: The aim is that by sharing practical advice, raising awareness and breaking down the barriers people face when talking about their mental health, we can all do our bit to help save lives. Rylan Clark has opened up about the reasons for his marriage split for the first time. The BBC Radio 2 host split from husband Dan Neal last year after six years in 2021, with the news coming out amid a four-month break from the spotlight. In January, The Mirror published a video of him on a night out, in which he giggles the words, “Gimme the gear.” It was, he writes in his book, “in the middle of the street, in public, and clearly I was making a joke”. But he doesn’t care about that now.Does choosing the high road also mean ignoring those headlines? “Since the whole ‘drugs scandal’, I just laugh now,” he says. Evidently, he still feels that way. “If you want to be a gymnast and win Gold at the Olympics, all you need to do is train for it,” he assures me. The couple went their separate ways after six years of marriage, and Rylan has been candid about the struggles he’s faced since then. He also regularly appears on Celebrity Gogglebox with his mother, Linda, and hosts his own Saturday radio show on BBC Radio 2.