BBC Radio 1

BROADCASTER Greg James sobbed as he spoke about his dad’s recent stroke on day two of his 1,000km tandem bike ride for Red Nose Day.

Earlier this month the Radio 1 host, 40, had to cancel his show and rush home after his beloved father Alan Milward suffered a stroke during a planned heart operation.

Greg, who took off from stormy Weymouth in Dorset on Friday will ride solo all the way to Edinburgh by next Friday.

Undertaking the mammoth task to raise money for Red Nose Day just a week after his dad’s stroke, Greg got on emotional talking about the man he calls “Big Al.”

“I feel elated. I feel a bit overwhelmed by all these people who just turned up out of nowhere. I just burst into tears as I was going up to Blaenavon. It was all a bit much,” Greg said on BBC Radio 1 after the second day of his ride.

“Just thought about… I just thought about everything. Just thought about my dad, thought about my mum. It got way too much. It’s so silly. It must have been the altitude.”

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Greg continued: “And then someone gave me a Wales flag and I was holding that and I thought about my old nan, and she’s Welsh. And then I just thought about everything and then everything just made me cry, and I just felt really overwhelmed by it all. 

“But the day is done, and I actually can’t believe I’ve managed to get to Abergavenny.”

Before heading off on his mammoth mission, Greg opened up to The Sun about his gruelling training regimen.

“I have been training really hard on my bicycle from about Christmas, and every day has been leg day,” he said.

“It’s been a f***ing nightmare. But it’s all for a good cause and totally worth it.

“I have done thousands of miles, either out in the real world or on a bike in the spare room with a laptop propped up watching Heated Rivalry.”

Greg also confirmed he has an upbeat playlist to keep him going.

He said: “The song I just can’t stop listening to is Aperture by Harry Styles. I’ve also got a lot of Chemical Brothers because that’s just nice, upbeat, good dance music.”

Vernon Kay, Sara Cox, Jo Whiley and Scott Mills have been cheering him on, while Jamie Laing and Mollie King have been offering advice following their own challenges.

Greg, who has affectionately named his bike Tando Norris, is still hoping for a message of support from Formula One McLaren driver Lando Norris.

He said: “Zak Brown and the McLaren team, if you’re reading this, please donate generously.”

You heard the man, McLaren!

Greg added: “The reason I’m doing this is because it will raise a lot of money for people that don’t have a safety net.

“I feel very lucky in my life. I have great friends and a really great family to support me if things go wrong.

“Imagine a tough time with no one looking after you. That’s what’s going to spur me on.”

• Donate at comicrelief.com/ride.

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.

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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.