Fearne Cotton has revealed she felt ‘shame’ after the horrific crimes of paedophile Lostprophets frontman Ian Watkins were reported during her BBC Radio 1 show.
The presenter briefly dated Watkins around 2005, when he was at the peak of his fame as a musician and before anything was known of his depraved behaviour.
The disgraced singer, who was stabbed to death in prison last year, was serving a 35-year sentence after being convicted of 13 child sexual offences, with charges including conspiring to rape an 11-month-old baby and three counts of sexual assault involving children.
Fearne, 44, has written a new book, Likeable, in which she reflects on how her need to please dominated her career in her 20s and 30s as she struggled with the pressures of being in the spotlight, after finding fame on TV as a teenage presenter in the 90s.
Jobs on Top of the Pops and Radio 1 followed, but Fearne left the station in 2015 after struggling with anxiety, and for her mental health.
Referencing one of her most difficult days on the job, she appears to write about working when Watkins was arrested and prosecuted for his horrendous child sex crimes.
While she doesn’t name him in the book, the Happy Place podcast host recalls working at Radio 1 when ‘a horrible news story that doesn’t involve me yet has a tenuous and life-altering link to me will be broadcast on my own radio show again that day’.
Watkins was initially arrested in 2012 and before being convicted in 2013 when Fearne would have been on air with the weekday mid-morning show.
According to The Mirror, Fearne felt ‘shame’ made it almost impossible for her to continue on the airwaves.
‘I feel simultaneously glared at, stared at, yet utterly ignored by those in the office. Are they all talking about me behind my back? Or am I a narcissist for thinking that?’ the outlet reports she wrote.
The presenter also shared that she felt sick while on air but tried to stay upbeat and ‘shoved down the anger, the rage, the sorrow and tears’.
Fearne also calls is a time of ‘depression and a heaviness’ but reportedly holds back from sharing too much detail over fears of it being reported in an overly sensational way.
However, she also writes that she no longer carries that shame after seeking therapy and understanding that it ‘belongs to others’ who have been in her life.
‘Men who have shamed me, treated me badly and left me lumbered with it,’ she adds.
Watkins was killed in prison last October, dying from a stab wound to the neck after being attacked by two fellow inmates.
Explaining the scrutiny she was dealing with on social media during her tenure at Radio 1, Fearne also revealed the impact it had had on her.
‘I stopped trying to be funny, I limited how much of myself I gave away, I diluted my personality to a weak imitation of the person I used to be. And then I quit. I stopped talking altogether. I believed at that point that the only way to be liked was to silence myself,’ she admitted.
‘Although I don’t regret leaving Radio 1, as it led to incredible new paths and opportunities, I feel sad that I let those voices in.’
Fearne split from husband of more than 10 years Jesse Wood in December, with whom she shares two children – son Rex, 13, and daughter Honey, 10.
Around the same time she had surgery to remove two benign tumours on her jaw.
She is currently travelling the UK on a tour in support of her new book, which is out today.
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