I drank 6 pints of Guinness a day to cope with stress of TV show sack
Adrian Chiles admits to alcohol problem
ADRIAN Chiles has revealed he was diagnosed with anxiety after he and Christine Bleakley were axed from ITV’s Daybreak in 2011.
The former chief football presenter for the channel recently discovered he has a dependence on alcohol while making a BBC documentary about the dangers of regular social drinking.
Chiles, 51, realised he was consuming the equivalent of six pints of Guinness a day – every day.
And he was warned he was in danger of cirrhosis, liver disease, liver failure and ultimately death.
Since making Drinkers Like Me, which airs next week, the dad of two has cut down his alcohol intake dramatically.
He said: “Daybreak was unbelievably stressful because, whatever we did, we couldn’t seem to get anyone to acknowledge it was working.
“Once I was freed from Daybreak, I thought, ‘this will be an easy life now,’ as I was being paid lots of money to present a football match every two weeks. But I felt terrible – and felt guilty for feeling terrible.
“I didn’t have enough to do and was over-thinking everything.
“I knew if I had a pint or two, everything would be fine, so I was self-medicating with alcohol. I was already seeing my GP for high blood pressure and reflux, and on one of those visits, I was diagnosed with anxiety.”
During his time at ITV, Chiles, who was prescribed with the anti-depressant citalopram, hosted live coverage and analysis of numerous England and Champions League matches, and covered two World Cups.
But, in 2015, he was sacked midcontract and replaced by Mark Pougatch.
Chiles told the Radio Times: “I knew it was coming. Anxiety had begun to affect my work. There was actually very little to do in presenting the football – ask a preprepared question of each pundit, throw to a break, and the less there was to do, the harder I found it. It became difficult for me to get the words out in the right order. “I’d gone from somebody who could ad lib for hours on end to the opposite.” He said he regrets the way his career as a live TV presenter ended so suddenly. He said: “I wish the contract had run its course and it had ended on a handshake, instead of, ‘right, we want you off-air now’. The way it was done made me look like I’d had my hand in the till.” In his new documentary, Chiles examines how alcohol had a “quiet, vice-like” grip on him. A lifelong West Bromwich Albion fan, he attends many matches and has five pints before the game starts.
He said: “The word ‘alcoholic’ is outdated, but I am undoubtedly dependent on alcohol to some extent – and if I am, thousands of others are.
“What I’m talking about isn’t falling down drunk, fighting, blacking out, reaching for a drink on waking every morning.”
Chiles, who split from wife Jane Garvey in 2009 after 11 years, added: “It’s not that I drink more because I’m not married now or because I live on my own.
“I like my own company, but I also like being in pubs and having a drink. It’s not about deep, dark anything, just what lots of people think of as normal. That’s the problem I’m addressing.”
Drinkers like Me: Adrian Chiles, is on BBC2, on Monday at 9pm.
The word alcoholic is outdated, but I am dependent ADRIAN CHILES ON HIS PROBLEMS WITH DRINK