Dale told friends he’d had enough
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Pal says star, who died yesterday at 62, was battling his demons
FRIENDS of Dale Winton, whose “unexplained” death is being probed by police, have told how he often claimed to have “had enough” of life.
LBC radio host Steve Allen, 64, a pal for almost 50 years, spoke on air of the fragilities of the Supermarket Sweep star who never got over finding his mum dead from a drug overdose.
He said: “He didn’t like the ageing process. He used to say to me ‘I’ve had enough’ and I used to say ‘Oh, you’ve got loads of things’.
“I’m actually quite happy for him. I know that sounds quite bizarre and I should explain. I don’t think he’d been in a good place for a long, long time. He would be so thrilled at the coverage.
“I feel happy for him that he’s in a place now where he’s probably going to be eternally young. He won’t age any more.”
Mr Allen also revealed that Winton, 62, had hinted at killing himself because of medical problems, emotional problems and “insecurities”.
And he had repeatedly asked: “Do you think there’d be a turn out at the funeral?” Yesterday a spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: “The death remains unexplained although at this early stage we are not treating it as suspicious.
“A post-mortem examination will be scheduled in due course.”
Speaking in his final TV interview in 2016, Winton revealed he could not meet anyone to spend his life with because he had spent too much time chasing “mean and nasty” men.
He said: “Nobody wants a camp, over-60 man. I can’t go on dating sites.
“I’m quite well known, so the minute you see the picture it’s desperately unattractive to another gay man to find a guy in showbusiness on there.”
Winton suffered heartbreak early in his life. His parents divorced when he was 10 and his father Gary died three years later on the day of his bar mitzvah.
Days after he turned 21 his actress mother Sheree, often referred to as the English Jayne Mansfield, killed herself.
The 40-year-old put a do not disturb sign outside her bedroom and downed barbiturates after a long battle with depression. In his autobiography Winton
wrote: “The next day I read my mother’s suicide note which had been written on a scrappy piece of paper.
“Mum apologized for what she had done and asked me to water the geraniums and look after the house.
“I was utterly heartbroken and quite incapable of taking anything in.”
As well as struggling with the loss of his mother, Winton suffered from depression himself and was badly hit by he breakdown of a serious relationship in 2011. On ITV’s Loose Women in 2016 he said: “I should have taken myself off the TV but I didn’t.
“Listen, there are worse things in the world but I had depression and I didn’t realise. I had a bad break-up and then I had health issues. “I wanted to withdraw but you know what this business is like.”
Radio DJ Winton became a household name in the 1990s with Supermarket Sweep.
The ITV show, which had contestants dashing around a mock-up shop collecting items, ran from 1993 to 2001 and was revived for a series in 2007.
He also hosted In It To Win It – the National Lottery quiz show which ran on the BBC from 2002 until 2016 – and in 2003 famously pretended to marry model Nell McAndrew for the BBC Three mockumentary Dale’s Wedding. Winton was found collapsed at home in Totteridge, North London, on Wednesday afternoon.
Yesterday it emerged he had sold his £2.6million apartment in Regent’s Park – home for the last 17 years – and moved nine miles to the five-bed semi on March 23. It is believed he was renting. Moments after he was found dead, a tall mystery blonde was seen talking to police.
Neighbour Evelyn Sawers, 69, said: “Between four and five in the afternoon four ambulances and lots of police arrived at the house.
“They couldn’t get through the main gate and had to use a side gate.”
He added that a blonde at the property was in some distress.
“She was on the phone and looked panicked.
“She went to the gate to check the house number and shouted it down the phone. She seemed upset. I think she was a relative. There was a man with grey hair who regularly visited him. I think he stayed for a week when he first moved in.”
Winton’s cousin Madeleine Trehearne said: “We feel he died far too young and we’re really cut up.”
Despite being a huge hit with viewers, the star was worried about when his TV career would end.
Television and radio star Danny Baker, 60, said Winton would feel “shocked” when he got gigs on the small screen.
He added that the presenter was “a thousand times more entertaining” in private.
Weeks before he died, Winton appeared on Channel 5 in new series Dale Winton’s Florida Fly Drive.
But only one episode aired before it was delayed after the Florida shootings.
Yesterday sources at the channel said the remaining episodes would air at “an appropriate time”, most probably this summer.
LBC HOST STEVE ALLEN WINTON’S PAL OF 50 YRS