Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Singer Bev: I puffed on skunk all day as my marriage fell apart
Promise Me singer on past drug habit
SINGER Beverley Craven has revealed she was smoking £100 worth of skunk a week when her marriage broke down.
The Promise Me star was smoking the super-strength cannabis all day and admits she had trouble hiding her habit.
Eventually it drove her further apart fr om singer -songwriter husband Colin Campsie before she took the unusual step of walking out on him and daughters Mollie, Brenna and Constance in 2010.
Beverley, 55, reveals in a newly updated version of her autobiography, Truth Be Told: “I loved the state of mind it put me in; reflective, removed and permanently sedated.
“It was my escape from a failing career and unfulfilling marriage. I would secretly begin puffing away first thing in the morning and remain stoned all day, popping up from the studio every so often for a quick fix. I was still able to function but it took an almighty effort pretending to be straight. “At one point I was smoking £200 of skunk grass a fortnight and having it delivered to my home using coded text messages to my supplier. I had allowed my chronic habit to virtually take over my life. In the words of Pink Floyd, I had become comfortably numb.” She says she and her husband were no longer sharing a bed by the time she left the family home, a £3million, sevenbedroom mansion in Buckinghamshire she paid for with the royalties from her 1991 hit Promise Me. She adds: “I think it’s fair to say our work ethics were pretty mismatched. My incessant dope habit was also coming between us.” She still lives nearby and insists walking out on her children was the right decision at the time.
He r mar r i a ge split came five years after she was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005.
Last year she was told it had returned, and she was forced to postpone the second leg of her tour with Ju di e Tzuke and Julia Fordham to have treatment. Beverley’s book Truth Be Told is available from her website at beverleycraven.com