TV NOEL: ‘EVIL’ BANK DROVE ME TO DRUGS OVERDOSE

Raw with pain and fury, Noel Edmonds lays bare the full shattering truth behind his case against bank that betrayed him

ON THE evening of January 18, 2005, Noel Edmonds closed the door of his manor house and walked towards the nearby woods, intent on ending his own life. Broken and lonely, he was barely recognisable as the irrepressible, pullover-clad TV host who had for decades appeared on our screens in Top Of The Pops, House Party and Multi-Coloured Swap Shop.

In his pocket was a stock of prescription pills he had been hoarding for a year and in his hand a bottle of vodka, grabbed from his drinks cabinet to wash the tablets down.

This was a Noel Edmonds in the depths of despair, a man whose seemingly gilded life had come crashing down around his ears. And his persecutor? Shockingly, he says, it was a high street bank – Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) – and one crooked banker in particular.

To Noel, a man who once had everything, it seemed as if there was simply nothing left to live for.

He says: ‘HBOS had robbed me of my marriage, my family, my businesses, my long-standing friend and business partner; my income, my investments, my self-respect, my reputation, my privacy, my physical and mental health. It cost me my security, my image rights, my collection of classic cars – and very nearly my life.’

Today, in a hugely emotional interview, Noel, 68, opens up for the first time about an episode that came close to destroying him – and about the behaviour of a banking system he now condemns as evil. After years of struggle, he finally feels strong enough to seek redress for the financial and emotional damage he has suffered.

He is claiming £300m from Lloyds, which bought HBOS at the height of the financial crisis. That’s how much he believes he has lost from in potential earnings from his onceflourishing business interests.

Noel accuses the bank of saddling his companies with ‘crippling fees and interest charges’ and of making unreasonable demands for personal guarantees that put his home and treasured possessions at risk.

It is a legal battle that is being watched closely by scores of other, non-famous business owners, who also believe their firms were pillaged by rogue bankers who effectively looted a series of sound businesses and blew the proceeds on exotic holidays, sex parties and prostitutes.

Looking back on the day that was so nearly his last, he explains that he chose the woods because they were powerfully associated with the memory of his late mother.

‘After she died, I took her things to a particular area that had power for me, where I had always felt comfortable, and one day I set fire to them,’ he recalls.

‘There was a mound in the wood and I remember dousing my mother’s clothes and paperwork and setting fire to them. It went “whoof”. I looked up and thought, “Mum, I hope you don’t mind – I hope you understand.” There was a bang, and an aerosol can flew out of the fire and missed me by an inch. I thought, “Oh damn, Mum, you didn’t want me to burn that stuff.”

‘Two years later, that was the place I went to try to kill myself.’

Was he, in his desperation, trying to reunite with his mother? ‘No. I don’t know,’ he stumbles. ‘I’ve thought a lot about that dark place I got to. Thankfully, it is beyond the comprehension of most people.

‘Yes, people suffer from depression. But it is not quite the same as the space you go into when all reason goes, when rationality and logic and hope vanish. Life without hope is no life. There is no logic. How illogical, when you adore your children and family, to do that.’

The destruction Noel suffered at the hands of what he calls the ‘HBOS criminals’ was both personal and financial.

Not only had the dispute laid waste to his business empire but it precipitated the end of his marriage, too. Before taking what he thought would be his last steps into the forest, Edmonds had written a letter to his then wife Helen, and recorded messages on Dictaphone tapes to each of his daughters – Charlotte, Lorna, Olivia and the youngest Alice, who was just seven.

I recorded messages to each of my four daughters. It was goodbye