Daytime TV’s Rylan tried to end his life after marriage split
RADIO 2 star Rylan Clark has revealed how he attempted to take his own life after splitting from his husband last year.
The much-loved presenter said he didn’t want to live any more when his six-year marriage to Dan Neal ended after Clark admitted cheating on him, but was pulled back from the brink by his mother Linda.
Clark, 33, also told how the ordeal left him fighting for his life after he was rushed to hospital when his heart rate rose to an incredible 248 beats per minute.
He said: ‘I did try and do stuff that I’m not proud of now. I’m glad I was unsuccessful. But I just didn’t want that for my mum. And when you are going to bed every single night wishing you don’t wake up and wishing someone or something up there just takes you in the night and it won’t be your fault, and no one can blame you, it is awful.’
On his cheating confession, Clark explained: ‘I woke up one morning and decided to tell my now ex that I had cheated on him, years ago. He left. Told me it was over and that was that.’ Clark’s fans were left worried for his welfare last spring after he disappeared from his Saturday afternoon show on Radio 2 without any explanation.
It later emerged that he had split from Mr Neal, 43, who he married in a star-studded ceremony in 2015.
Speaking for the first time about how the break-up left him moments from death, to Claudia Winkleman at the launch of his forthcoming book Ten: The Decade That Changed My Future, he said: ‘There were weeks that I couldn’t speak. I can talk for England. My mum was concerned at one point that I had genuinely had a stroke but I couldn’t get any words out. It was like my body shut down.’
At London’s Royal Festival Hall on Wednesday, he said: ‘Twice last year I ended back in an ambulance because my heart had failed. Your BPM should be like 60-120 and mine was 248. I could feel it and I knew it wasn’t right. It turned out that my heart had to be re-started.’
Clark, who catapulted to fame on ITV show the X Factor in 2012 as a ‘joke’ act, also told earlier this year how he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for his own safety. Despite being 6ft 4in, he weighed just 9st at one point. In his book, out later this month, the radio and television presenter will tell how he sat his mother down and told her that he needed to be ‘locked up’.
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‘My heart had to be re-started’