Singer Tommy Fleming has announced he is gay in an interview in which he discussed the breakdown of his nearly 20-year marriage.
The veteran musician (55) from Co Sligo said he regretted hurting those he loved, and that he is finally “living my truth” after growing up in a context where people around him were hostile to gay people.
He also discussed being hospitalised after attempting to take his own life last year.
Speaking to Ciara Kelly on Newstalk’s Drivetime, he said: “We were very happy, but small cracks started to appear – mainly for me – and the small cracks were never mended.
“Those cracks became a chasm.”
He said he had been “living a lie my whole life” but was now ready to change that.
At the weekend, Fleming’s former wife Tina Mitchell, who he met in 2002 and married in 2006, confirmed their marriage had ended and said they were separated since last October.
She also said she is no longer his manager “in any capacity”.
Fleming said: “The hardest part of that was the energy and the effort it took for this lie to be constantly covered and to be, I suppose, protected,” he said.
“And that lie was that I’m gay.
“I’m finally living my truth, I’m finally being honest, being able to live a life that’s true.”
He said Ireland “was a very different country” when he was a young man.
“I remember, it was in about 1984, ’85; it was at the height of the Aids epidemic and crisis,” he said. “Every evening on the news, there was something about San Francisco, it was always these just awful stories. My uncle was in the house in my home place with some other neighbour and they were watching the TV, with this guy that had a week to live.
“He was telling his story, to which one of them turned around and said, ‘They should be burned alive.’”
He said his wife was aware of his “bisexual phase” when they first met.
“That was the very first thing I said to her.”
He said he “yearned for the real me”.
“I knew every day … I was not the real me.”
He said he felt “trapped” within his own body.
To deal with the guilt he was feeling, Fleming used alcohol, illegal drugs and prescription drugs.
“I medicated with them. They were, they were a painkiller … to help me sleep.”
He revealed that last September, he attempted suicide by overdose and was later admitted to St Patrick’s Hospital in October.
“I initially felt like an absolute failure. I felt like I had absolutely failed in every, in every walk of life, in everything I’d done. And I wasn’t a real man.”
He also said a phone call he made from the hospital was recorded and leaked without his knowledge and gardaí are investigating. He said his “hand was forced” to come out, partly due to a leaked recording which he also said took away his autonomy, his chance to tell his five siblings and took away the privacy of his suicide attempt.
“The only thing I can say is, I’m absolutely remorseful and regretful for any of the hurt I’ve caused to the people I love,” he said.
“Someday I hope, if there is a God, I would hope and pray that there would be acceptance.”
“If the last two weeks were to have happened six or seven months ago … I don’t think I would have survived it,” he said.
He said his mental health, his family, his closest friends and his music are most important to him now.