FEARNE Cotton has revealed she felt “shamed, stared at and ignored” by colleagues after the arrest of her former boyfriend Ian Watkins.
While she does not mention him by name, the former Radio 1 star discusses a “life-altering” news story connected to her in her new book.
In Likeable, released this week, the former BBC Radio 1 host hints at the difficult period she endured after the Lostprophets frontman admitted to 13 child sex offences.
The now 44-year-old recalls being live on air 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”.
Fearne briefly dated Lostprophets frontman Watkins in the mid-2000s after the pair met at the Kerrang! Awards.
The relationship is believed to have lasted around a year, and the presenter largely kept it out of the spotlight at the time.
His offending only came to light years after the pair had split.
Watkins was arrested in 2012 over child sex offences and convicted the following year, during which time Fearne was hosting BBC Radio 1’s weekday mid-morning show.
The radio star wrote: “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?”
Ian Watkins later pleaded guilty to offences including the attempted rape of a child and was jailed for 29 years in 2013.
In quotes obtained by The Mirror, Fearne writes that she struggled with intense shame and nausea as she tried to keep broadcasting.
Trying to push through, she explained that she “shoved down the anger, the rage, the sorrow and tears” in order to keep going, describing the period as one of “depression and a heaviness”.
However, she said she has since worked through those feelings in therapy and realised the shame was never hers to carry.
Instead, she wrote that it “belongs to others” and mostly the men from her past.
The mother-of-two added: “Men who have shamed me, treated me badly and left me lumbered with it.”
Watkins died from blood loss at HMP Wakefield in October after being stabbed in the neck.
West Yorkshire Police later charged two men, aged 25 and 43, with murder. Their trial is set to begin in May.
Shortly after the news of his death, Fearne shared a reflective post on Instagram in which she spoke about struggling with shame and sleep.
“Here are four things that I learned this week,” she said in the video.
“The first one was from the Happy Place podcast where I spoke to Charlie Mackesy who talked a lot about shame which I greatly appreciated.
“And the one reminder that I had from that episode was that so many of us feel shame but we assume it’s just us because that is what shame does.
“It wants you to believe that it’s just you but it’s not…”
She added in the caption: “Four life lessons from this week. I’m not sleeping well.
My brain is a bit wobbly at the moment but I’m grasping the lessons life is chucking my way.”
Insiders previously told the Mail the presenter is “haunted” and “very, very humiliated” each time his name is mentioned.