Myleene: I was drinking at 11am as divorce took toll

MYLEENE Klass has admitted turning to drink due to the stress of the bitter divorce that left her life spiralling out of control.

The broadcaster, 40, said the support of her friends saved her from ‘self-destruct’ after her marriage to Graham Quinn broke down. She would start drinking in the morning and struggled to go more than a few hours without alcohol.

‘I remember waking up and thinking it’s OK to have a drink at 11am, because I hadn’t had a drink in five hours,’ she said on Yahoo’s White Wine Question Time podcast hosted by Kate Thornton.

Miss Klass said she reached rock bottom when she was in a car taking her to television studios.

She said: ‘I was doing breakfast TV, and the guy opened the door, and I just took a breath because I thought, “I can’t get out of the car”. I was in the middle of a divorce, I was trying to get my kids balanced, my finances were spiral-manager Split: Myleene Klass and Quinn ling, because you’re thinking, “I’m going to lose everything”.

‘You’re so frightened, the humiliation, you’ve got people looking at you, blaming you, without a clue what the f*** is going on.’

Miss Klass praised the support of her friends, speaking of how her Severine Berman and Lauren Laverne, the Radio 6 Music DJ, came to her house at 4am after a breakdown.

She said her experience made her more empathetic to the struggles of other women. ‘It wasn’t something I wanted to define me, but I do think it changed me, irrevocably,’ she said.

‘It’s given me such an empathy for what other women go through. I’ll never be able to look at it in another way now.’

Miss Klass met Mr Quinn while he was working as a security guard for Hear’Say, the pop group that was created through the ITV reality show Popstars. They have two daughters together – Ava, 11, and Hero, seven – and married in 2011 but he left her six months later on her 34th birthday.

In 2013 she was granted a ‘quickie’ divorce in just 100 seconds at London’s high court after citing ‘unreasonable behaviour’. She is now dating PR consultant Simon Motson.