Well-loved entertainer Alistair Izobell shocked his fans when he opened up out about his jolling and divorce this week.
The singer and actor also revealed in an interview on Heart FM that he suffers from depression and tried to commit suicide a few weeks ago.
This ahead of the launch of his tell-all autobiography, Broken, set to be released on 15 December.
Asked why he was speaking out about his affair now, Alistair, 47, said he is setting the record straight to shut down rumours and judgement before they get “bastardised” any further.
The father of two has admitted that he had a seven-year long affair while still married to his wife Kim.
He did not reveal who his mistress was, but left some clues in a Facebook video, saying: “There’s no reason for me to reveal the person, who is a very well-known singer, a beautiful woman with an incredible heart.
“But I think that she couldn’t commit to us, because of her family dynamics and the church, and everything else.”
Speaking to Daily Voice, Alistair insists that he did not leave his wife for the mystery woman.
He says: “No, I didn’t divorce my ex-wife, she divorced me.”
“When you ask ‘why speak about the affair now after so many years’, well that’s what an affair is, it’s deceit, it’s filled with lies, with hidden moments, it’s filled with absolute destruction that you know is going to come and yet, you just continue because of where you find yourself emotionally.”
In the Facebook video, he said that while his mistress encouraged him to divorce his wife, she broke his heart when she dumped him.
He adds: “The night before I got divorced, she said, ‘get divorced, my love, because then we can be together and we don’t have this seven years of where we couldn’t tell anyone that we were in love. And then months later, this person cuts me out of their lives.”
He tells the Daily Voice that he and the other woman “didn’t choose each other, life decided to bring us together”, saying: “What we did was choose to continue it because there was great love and respect and care.”
The Daily Voice reached out to Kim for comment, but she said she was not ready to speak. According to Alistair, the affair has become “irrelevant” to him, following a suicide attempt a few weeks ago, when he drank “over 100 of lethal tablets”.
The stage star explains: “You can’t ask me what led me to the decision of trying to end my life because it’s a feeling that is so dark that you cannot put into words what that moment feels like…”
But he did lay some of the blame for his depression on his irregular childhood, having first burst onto the entertainment scene at the tender age of eight, and became a household name for decades.
He says seeing other youngsters beaming and happy on stage confused him, as he always felt sad and lonely, especially when travelling abroad.
The singer adds: all he has left is survivor’s guilt, knowing how much his actions hurt his family, saying: “I did have an affair and I’m not the first or last person to have to admit that but, that really is of no value to me right now, other than my healing and being in the space where I can be a better human being.”