This year’s X Factor favourite, Ben ‘boring as cheese’ Haenow, looks like he has the world at his feet. However, it has been revealed that the star has endured a fifteen-year battle with booze and depression.
Cheer up, dude – you are about to make Simon Cowell loads of money.
Haenow has spilt his heart to a British tabloid newspaper. He claims that the stress of coming from a broken home made him ‘spiral into a deep depression’.
A weeping Ben revealed: “As I got older, I couldn’t handle it and used to drink a lot. I was 14 years old and just necking a bottle of vodka a day until I was sick and paralytic.
“Me and a mate would get a few bottles in and do it every night. I would stay out at a friend’s house so my mum wouldn’t see me like that.”
“It would be stupid to say I wasn’t depressed. At the time the drinking seemed fine to me.”
Looking on the bright side, Haenow says he avoided drugs. Clever boy.
He said: “When we were young the big thing was glue sniffing but we didn’t do that. I just preferred vodka.
“Physically and mentally it was bad. I was hungover and felt like s*** at school.”
It is great that Haenow has experience of booze and despair, the perfect training for pop star life.
The 29-year-old contestant says that the divorce of his parents, Mick and Rosanna, sent him into depression from just four years of age.
‘As I got older I couldn’t handle it and I used to drink a lot,’ he told the Daily Mirror. ‘It takes someone to say to you it’s not normal, this isn’t right, which is when you stop. I just wanted to get off my face,’ he reflected.
Ginger Clam hopes that you have all your crazy issues sorted now, Benny boy. You will be facing a whole load more when you win the X Factor.
You can watch the next live X Factor show by tuning into ITV 1 (below) for free at FilmOn.com.