Barlow on pain of stillbirth

GARY Barlow says he wants to be open about the death of his daughter because “men don’t talk about these things”.

Poppy was delivered stillborn in 2012, days before Take That were booked to perform at the closing ceremony of the London Olympics.

The star, 47, tells Desert Island Discs: “I think it’s something you accept you’re going to be dealing with for the rest of your life.”

Barlow, who has three other children with wife Dawn, says: “In a strange way, you don’t want it to end because it’s one of the few things you have to remind you, of the person who’s not there. In some ways, the pain and the grief brings you closer to them.”

He initially felt that the bereavement was “too painful and private to talk or comment on publicly”.

But he said of writing about the tragedy in his autobiography: “For some reason men don’t talk about those things, so I think it felt it was important for me, as a man, to talk about that.”

Desert Island Discs is on BBC Sounds and BBC Radio 4 today at 11.15am.