toxic

HE is the nineties pop star who finally found his happily ever after.

But for Phats & Small singer Ben Ofoedu, the road to marital bliss was paved with a painful history of what he now describes as mental abuse and emasculation by former partner Vanessa Feltz. Something which friends of the Channel 5 presenter vehemently deny.

A year on from his lavish £100,000 Cumbrian wedding to aesthetics entrepreneur Vanessa Brown – affectionately dubbed Vanessa 2.0 by the man himself – the 53-year-old musician is practically glowing.

He is happier, healthier, and four stone lighter. But behind his beaming smile and the tales of his idyllic new life, there lies a darker, turbulent history that he is only just now ready to reveal to the world.

In a searingly honest new interview with The Sun, Ben has opened up about the toxic reality of his 17-year relationship with television and radio veteran Vanessa Feltz, making explosive allegations about the profound psychological toll of their high-profile romance.

While the collapse of his engagement to the Channel 5 presenter in 2023 was highly publicised following his admitted infidelity, Ben claims the public has only ever heard half the story. Now, after intense therapy and finding true love, he is shedding light on what really went on behind closed doors.

Through his recent charitable endeavours with his new bride, the singer has found himself reflecting heavily on his own past.

“We do a lot of charity stuff for victims of abuse, and you come across a lot of men in these situations,” Ben explains.

“Men who’ve been mentally abused, not so much physically. People think abuse means physical, but you can be abused mentally.

“Everything from emasculation to being told you’re not good enough. It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

When asked if this observation stems from his own personal experience with his famous ex-fiancée, Ben doesn’t flinch.

“Yeah, oh yeah, without a doubt,” he states firmly. “Emasculation, people referring to you as not being able to read, down-talking you, a constant barrage of insults. People don’t have to look too far to see where it came from.”

The trauma, he reveals, is deep-seated, creeping up on him over the course of almost two decades.

He recalls: “When I was out of it. When you’re in it, it’s so subtle, so gradual that you don’t quite see it happening, you don’t quite know. You question everything and ask, ‘Why did that happen? Why did I feel like that?’ When someone professional starts going through it with you, you can see the patterns and stuff like that. Yeah, I had therapy after that.”

Today, Ben refuses to even utter his ex’s name, a stark indicator of the deep freeze between the former couple.

“There is only one Vanessa,” he declares, referring lovingly to his new bride. “I don’t know that other lady. And I definitely don’t know her from the comments she’s said. I don’t know that lady anymore.”

He confirms that he has no contact with the 64-year-old broadcaster, nor does he have any desire to ever cross paths with her again.

He insists: “No, not at all, and I really wouldn’t want to. I’ve got nothing to do with her, I want nothing to do with her. People are in your life for a season, a reason, or a lifetime, and she was there for a season. It was a long season, but it was maybe a bit too long.”

The fallout from the split undeniably damaged his public reputation, painting him squarely as the villain of the piece.

But Ben is deeply critical of how his former flame handled the break-up.

“The truth is, I’m kind of a musician, and that’s kind of what it is, it’s only tied to her until something else happens and there’s a new story being written, it’s the past really, that’s what that is.

“I’ve not really much to say for her. I think she was completely classless the way she dealt with things, it’s not my sort of person, I don’t know her anymore, I don’t recognise her.”

Addressing the fallout and the damage to his reputation, Ben remains philosophical.

“Yes, completely. The great thing that happened was I got to know who my friends were,” he admits.

“I understand the general public doesn’t know me personally, but my wedding was a great testimony of the people who know me and the friends that I had, the people who really knew me. You reap what you sow; that’s all I can say. You reap what you sow. It doesn’t take a genius to see what’s going on.”

When pressed on the cheating scandal that ultimately torpedoed the relationship, Ben is defensive, taking a swipe at how his ex monetised the pain.

“Now about the infidelity, I never said that it was the way to do things,” he explains.

“For Vanessa, that was her story, and she used it and monetised it, and when it’s not working for her, she moved on to something else. I wouldn’t monetise a real relationship that had real problems. I think to tell the media that it’s over before you tell the person is not… I don’t know many situations that do that.”

When asked if his new wife worries about his history of being unfaithful, Ben is quick to shut down the narrative that he is a serial cheat.

He told me: “I don’t know if doing it once is a history, I don’t know if that constitutes a history of it. She made me look worse than I was, and it garnered a lot more attention. I don’t know if once is a history, that’s what I will say about that. There’s never been any conversation about that at all.”

He also casts doubt on whether his previous 16-year engagement was ever destined for the altar at all, bluntly suggesting the intention to actually tie the knot was not there “from the other side”.

He also has a brutal theory as to why his ex has failed to find lasting romance since their bitter split.

“I mean, I don’t know if I would want to be with a lady who’d want to discuss every single detail of their private life,” he said.

“I think how men saw me come out of that situation, they think, ‘No thanks, not for me’.”

But Ben is finally ready to reclaim his narrative. He is currently putting the finishing touches on his own autobiography, playfully titled Turnaround: Memoirs of an Ageing Boy Bander, which he hopes will hit the shelves this December.

“I’ve been writing it. I was going to put it out last year, but there were a few parts I missed out when I read through; I need to give the full context. Everything’s in the book; it’s about turnaround moments in my life, good and bad. That period of my life.”

“But it’s nice for people to see the actual context and how we got together and what happened behind closed doors, you’ve only heard her side of the story,” he adds, taking a thinly veiled swipe at his ex’s memoirs.

“I didn’t respond to anything she said in her book, and obviously it didn’t do very well, that’s the thing. I’m not doing it for that. I talk about my musical journey, it brings me up to the current day, and what a happy relationship can be like.”

He confirms no lawyers have had to get involved with his manuscript: “No, I won’t mention her name. She cleverly didn’t mention mine, she called me OHW [One Hit Wonder], but people will know.”

Asked if the book will definitely hit shelves this year, he says: “Aiming for December, but I don’t know. It’s not quite finished, I need to type two more chapters, making sure everything is real and really happened, making sure. We’re hoping for December, that’s what we’re pushing towards.”

The contrast between his turbulent past and his blissful present truly couldn’t be starker. Ben is buzzing with energy as he discusses his 30-year-old wife, Vanessa Brown.

The couple, who married after a whirlwind romance, are utterly inseparable.

“I found myself again, I am buzzing,” he says. “Every day is happy, we got together, and within six months we were married, when you know you know.”

He has strong advice for others when it comes to love, formed by the fire of his past mistakes.

“These long drawn-out engagements, unless you’ve got a couple of kids and are waiting to afford the wedding, I think they’re pointless,” he says.

“You’re engaged to be married, not to be engaged. I don’t think that works, and that’s just from experience. If you meet someone, within six months, you pretty much know whether you’ll get married or not. Don’t carry on the relationship more than six months if you’re not sure you want to spend the rest of your life with that person.”

He also revealed that the couple are actively trying for a baby.

“Hopefully, by the end of the year, that’s what we’re trying to do. If Vanessa fell pregnant late this year, that would be amazing news; that’s why we’re travelling and doing all the things couples do before they have kids.

“We want as many as God provides. I come from a big family, and I know what it’s like to have brothers and sisters. I always loved that growing up.”

For Ben Ofoedu, the dark days of his past are now firmly in the rearview mirror.

He insists that with Vanessa 2.0 by his side, a tell-all book on the way, and exciting baby plans for the couple, his life is now complete.

Representatives for Vanessa Feltz were contacted for comment.

A NOUGHTIES pop star has hinted he’s quitting fame after 25 years in the spotlight as furiously ranted online.

The 42-year-old took to his Instagram to share some hard truths about the industry and told how he’d rather live a simpler live.

Lee Ryan, a star of the 90s boyband Blue, explained that he’s “been through hell and back” and said he now “hates the public eye.”

The singer found fame in the early 2000s after the band achieved massive success with their debut album All Rise in 2001.

Blue, who have three UK Number 1 Platinum-selling albums, are still going strong, with tours lined up for the rest of this year and next.

Alongside Antony Costa, Duncan James and Simon Webbe, Lee has been taking to the stage but it seems he’s not entirely happy.

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He posted a picture of himself singing at a concert on Instagram and captioned it with the statement: “As much as I love my career I’ve had for 25 years singing in Blue, sometimes I just want to go home to be a husband and father to my baby’s.

“There’s no place I feel more at peace than with them. This industry sucks you in and spits you out the other end… I’ve been through hell and back in the public eye and I actually hate it now.”

Lee continued: “I don’t like the fame part of this job anymore, it’s fake and quite toxic. People use you and abuse you and use your success as a weapon.”

“Don’t get me wrong I love singing and being creative making music and seeing the fans at shows,” said Lee.

“The rest I could leave behind and never step foot into that space again happily… I have no interest in the industry bs anymore…. Rather be home being a dad and a husband x”

Fans took to the comments to support Lee while some felt annoyed that they had brought tickets and could see he “didn’t want to do it anymore.”

One fan wrote: “I love blue, I still do. But at the concert I feel like I could see that you don’t really want it anymore. It‘s sad because people pay money to see the absolute best of you…”

Another fan said: “Thank you for carrying on and bless us with your beautiful voice. There is no place like home and I am sure your family is forever proud of you.”

A third fan added: “You would be missed, your voice, stage presence and banter is truly in a small minority BUT you have to do what’s best for you.”

Lee’s wife Verity also rushed to support her man. She said: “You get to do both!!! Be a pop star and come back to reality and live on the farm in the sunshine!!! We love you Mr, keep going nearly home time xxx”

The couple, who married in Gibraltar in 2022, share four children together.

Blue took a hiatus in 2004 but later reformed with the original bandmembers in 2011.

WASHINGTON — Debris from the demolition of the White House East Wing that was dumped at a nearby public golf course has tested positive for lead, chromium and other toxic metals, the National Park Service said.

An interim report by a Virginia engineering firm says the toxic metals, along with PCBs, pesticides, petroleum byproducts and other chemicals were detected at levels above laboratory reporting limits in soil at the East Potomac Golf Links, a historic golf course that President Trump plans to renovate.

The park service began dumping debris from the East Wing onto the golf course in October, and more than 810,000 cubic feet of excavated soil had been transported to the site as of last month, the report by Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. said. The report was requested by the park service.

The nonprofit DC Preservation League has sued the Trump administration, arguing that the dumping was unlawful and possibly hazardous. The group also is challenging the Republican administration’s takeover of the golf course, about two miles southeast of the White House, and others in the city.

The suit is one of several legal battles challenging Trump’s extraordinary efforts to put his mark on public spaces in the nation’s capital, including renaming and shuttering the Kennedy Center and building a 250-foot-tall triumphal arch near the Lincoln Memorial.

At the end of last year, a separate group of preservationists filed a lawsuit seeking to prevent the administration from demolishing the East Wing so it could build a ballroom, a project slated to cost $400 million.

A spokesperson for the Interior Department, which oversees the park service, said in an email Tuesday that the soil removed from the White House “was tested multiple times by multiple parties, and this project passed all standards set by law.”

Although the agency does not comment on litigation, “this thorough process was followed to ensure the transfer was safe for the public,’’ the email said.

The Preservation League’s executive director, Rebecca Miller, said Tuesday that experts were still analyzing the engineering report. The group also is concerned about whether the Trump administration is complying with federal laws including the National Historic Preservation Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, she said.

Debris from the East Wing demolition is so prevalent that it causes golfers to detour around piles of it, Miller said. “If you Google you’ll see lots of photos of golfers walking past it,” she said in an interview.

The Trump administration’s plans to renovate the 105-year-old course to make it a professional-level course would permanently alter its historic character and layout, Miller said.

A federal judge told the government on Monday not to cut down more than 10 trees without first providing notice amid the legal dispute.

U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes said during a remote hearing that she wasn’t going to issue a temporary restraining order just yet, but she indicated she would take a harsh view of any major alterations made without prior notice.

Democracy Forward, a national legal organization that is co-representing the Preservation League, said in a press release that “further scrutiny will be required related to potential toxins that were dumped at East Potomac Park by the administration as part of the destruction of the East Wing of the White House.”

Test results released by the government “suggest the Defendants dumped a cocktail of contaminants — and despite indications of the refuse’s contents, they continued dumping it,” the group said.

Kevin Griess, the superintendent of the National Mall and Memorial Parks for the park service, said during Monday’s court hearing there was no immediate plan to begin tree removal but added that a safety assessment was underway.

Trump, an avid golfer, also plans on renovating a military golf course just outside Washington that has been used by past presidents going back decades.

In its statement, the Interior Department said it is “committed to continuing the relationships we have built with the local golf communities to ensure these courses are safe, beautiful, open, affordable, enjoyable, accessible, and world-class for people living in and visiting the greatest capital city in the world.”

Daly and Fields write for the Associated Press.

Plucked from a previous life as a working actor, Richard Gadd experienced a disorienting whirlwind less than two years ago. “Baby Reindeer,” his painfully personal 2024 Netflix show, based on the sexual assault he survived, instantly opened the floodgates of fame for him.

“The show came out on Thursday, and by Sunday, I could barely walk anywhere without being recognized, without being stopped,” Gadd says while visiting The Times’ offices earlier this month. “That’s an adjustment because I always thought if anything like that ever happened, it would be a bit more of a gradual process. But it was overnight, so I didn’t have time to adjust.”

Now the winner of three Emmy Awards and a slew of other accolades for that series, which he starred in, wrote and served as showrunner, Gadd, 36, has already helmed a new emotionally ferocious show.

Probing the tropes of rigid masculinity, “Half Man,” premiering Thursday on HBO, chronicles the destructive bond between two men over several decades. Niall and Ruben — whose respective mothers are romantic partners — call themselves brothers but they couldn’t be more dissimilar.

Bullied at school, meek Niall (played by Mitchell Robertson in his youth and Jamie Bell in adulthood) lost his father as a young boy. He dreams of being a writer. Meanwhile, the insolent and hyper-confident Ruben (Stuart Campbell as a teen and Gadd as a grown-up) has been in trouble with the law from a tender age. Facing any conflict, he resorts to brutal violence. When Ruben takes Niall under his wing, the two become inseparable. But as the years and resentments pile on, their cancerous brotherhood threatens to obliterate them both.

“Half Man” follows the destructive bond between Ruben (Richard Gadd), left, and Niall (Jamie Bell) over several decades.

(Anne Binckebanck / HBO)

“Richard’s writing is really unique and really singular,” Bell says on a video call from England, where he’s currently shooting the “Peaky Blinders” sequel series and is sporting a shorter haircut. “He identifies that real gray area of humanity really well and he puts a voice to the most uncomfortable places that we go into or things that we think when we’re alone in the dark, when we think no one’s watching.”

Gadd wrote the first episode of what would become “Half Man” back in 2019, while he still was performing the live version of “Baby Reindeer,” which he turned into the series. At the time, he recalls, society at large was seriously engaging in conversations around toxic masculinity and sexual violence as the #MeToo movement gained strength.

“It wasn’t necessarily that I set out going, ‘Oh, I want to make a show about that,’” Gadd says. “It was more that something must have just drifted into my head thinking, ‘You take two men repressed in their current life, repressed in the modern world. And then you go all the way back to their childhood. You contextualize learned behavior; you contextualize trauma and things they learned that make them these repressed adults. And you bring a bit of context to, I suppose, difficult male behavior in the present.’”

As “Baby Reindeer” launched his career as a creator, Gadd put “Half Man” on ice for four years but couldn’t stop thinking about returning to it. “Even as I was coming to the end of ‘Baby Reindeer,’ I thought, ‘I’m really looking forward to getting back to that project,” he recalls. “The second ‘Baby Reindeer’ finished, I thought, ‘This is what I’m going to do now.’”

Sitting across from the mild-mannered Gadd, the magnitude of his transformation on screen for “Half Man” becomes even more impressive. Gadd comes off as thoughtful and emphatic, while Ruben, his physically imposing character, commands trepidation.

“The second ‘Baby Reindeer’ finished, I thought, ‘This is what I’m going to do now,’” Gadd says about working on “Half Man.”

(Ian Spanier / For The Times)

Watching Gadd as the rage-fueled Ruben, one might be surprised to learn he originally had no intention of acting in “Half Man.” After wearing multiple hats on “Baby Reindeer,” Gadd thought this time around he could get a purely external bird’s-eye view of a project as showrunner and writer of “Half Man.” But eventually people around him suggested he should be in front of the camera once again.

“My initial response was always, ‘That’s just so far away from anything I’ve done before. It’s so far away from me. Are people going to buy it?’” he recalls. “And behind every single fear-based thought was a worry of what people might think, which in my opinion, isn’t a good enough reason to not do something.”

Convinced audiences would struggle to see the guy from “Baby Reindeer” as this “hard man,” a U.K. term for tough and intimidating men, he had to physically morph. To inhabit a new body, Gadd underwent a strict exercise regimen, and most importantly, a new diet.

“I had a chef make these meals in England, fun enough, and send them up to Scotland where I was filming,” he recalls. “I’d eat them at specific times. You go through periods of fasting and through dehydration whenever you had your top off. There was a real science to it.”

And yet, though he at first worried he wouldn’t look big enough, Gadd refused to portray Ruben with a chiseled physique conceived for mere aesthetics.

“I didn’t want him to have a six pack, I wanted him to feel like a real person,” Gadd says. “Sometimes when you see someone on TV and they’re ripped, I almost don’t think that’s real strength. Someone like Ruben, they wear their life in their body, they’re heavy set. It’s not ripped. It’s bulky. It’s natural to him.”

Before he agreed to play the character, Gadd auditioned numerous actors for the part, but with all of them he felt they were too focused on his appearance as an imposing figure and not his inner turmoil. “Ruben is extremely sad as a person. He’s terribly broken and traumatized,” he says.

For the series, Gadd bulked up to become more physically imposing: “Someone like Ruben, they wear their life in their body, they’re heavy set. It’s not ripped. It’s bulky. It’s natural to him.” Richard Gadd in “Half Man.” (Anne Binckebanck / HBO)

When asked if he sees himself as Ruben, Gadd contemplates the question, debating whether it’s his “jetlagged brain” or ambivalence about finding some of Ruben within him.

“Do I see myself in Ruben?” After a pause, he concedes: “All of his behavior is a reaction to a deep traumatic happening in his life. I can relate to finding it extremely difficult to get past big traumatic events and coming to terms with them and coming to terms with yourself even as a result of them.”

With less hesitation, Bell, 40, acknowledges that he finds a certain kinship with his character. As a teenager, Bell flocked to people with a defiant edge. “I grew up without a father in an all-female household and I felt very naked as a child in terms of needing to be protected by someone who was dominant and aggressive,” he says. “I totally understand why Niall seeks solace in someone like him. No one will touch Ruben. There is a safety in that.”

Gadd says he doesn’t think about celebrities when searching for the actors. “I’m quite fame-averse when it comes to casting because I think sometimes it can get in the way,” he explains. “You can have a show, which starts up with all the best intentions, turn into a sort of acting vehicle for someone, or the discussion becomes about the actor doing this role.”

That said, when the casting director on “Half Man” asked him about his “dream cast,” Gadd expressed Bell was the only one who would genuinely excite him. But could that happen? “In my head, I was still in pre-‘Baby Reindeer’ time where I thought, ‘Well, somebody like him is not going to be interested.’ And then I thought, ‘Well, he might be,’” Gadd says.

For his part, Bell found the “nihilism” in Niall, a man desperately running from his true self and living in Ruben’s shadow, an enticing and complex character to play. “[Niall] conceals himself in many different ways, and has a lot of self-loathing, but at the same time has all these ambitions and actually is incredibly egotistical and thinks that his way is the correct way, and that other people don’t understand that he is terminally unique,” Bell explains with a chuckle.

Bell, who plays Niall, says his character “conceals himself in many different ways, and has a lot of self-loathing, but at the same time has all these ambitions and actually is incredibly egotistical …”

(Anne Binckebanck / HBO)

Aside from a tight schedule to produce “Half Man,” the challenge for Bell was adjusting to the dramatic intensity that Gadd was after. “I wasn’t particularly prepared for that, therefore sometimes my reading of certain scenes I’d get wrong. We’d start scenes and Richard was like, ‘You are pitching it at like a six, and this is very much an 11,’” Bell recalls laughing. I was like, ‘Oh, OK.’ That took some modulating.”

In Gadd’s mind, Bell remains an “underrated” artist. A proud Scotsman, Gadd recalls loving Bell in the 2007 romantic dramedy “Hallam Foe,” where the British actor played Scottish. For “Half Man,” Gadd thought Bell could convey the pain that haunts Niall, even as his actions paint him less like Ruben’s victim and more like a vengeful participant in the chaos.

“There’s always something I find so vulnerable about Jamie and I knew that I was going to take Niall in some really big journeys where he was going to almost test the audience’s love for him,” Gadd says. That Niall finds Ruben so alluring is natural to Gadd, who believes the notion of a valiant male figure has been bred into everyone via fables and fairy tales.

Gadd adds that whether or not we like to admit it, we’re drawn to alpha male characters. “Because from an early age, we’ve been told they are always at the top of the social hierarchy. And as a result, we’ve always, as a society, answered to those kinds of people as some sort of leaders.”

And though he says he’s unfamiliar with the “manosphere,” the misogynistic and chauvinistic online community, Gadd doesn’t believe Ruben would fall for the gurus in those circles who claim to have the answers for young guys to become “real men.”

“Ruben carved his own masculinity. To give him credit, if that’s even something you can give him, those spaces wouldn’t hold any weight for him. He’s his own man,” Gad says. “He would never follow anyone on social media. He’s the person to be followed.”

Based on the tone of Gadd’s output thus far, it may come as a surprise that as a young person he dreamed of creating a show along the lines of the U.K.’s “The Office,” which he considers a “perfect piece of art.” The stories he is telling now better reflect his “neuroses” and the experiences he’s endured.

“My life just took a very dramatic turn, and my sensibilities weren’t workplace sitcoms anymore. When I grew up and I was doing comedy I thought, ‘I’ll write a sitcom one day and every character will be sort of funny in it,’” he says. “But my life just took a turn to the point where I needed my writing and my art darkened because what I went through was very dark.”

Humor is not entirely absent from “Half Man,” some of the characters’ reactions to their distressing realities earn a chuckle. Still, Gadd’s funny bone might also find an outlet in other people’s narratives. He was recently announced as part of the cast in Apple TV’s upcoming high-concept series “Husbands,” for which he already shot his scenes. Adapted from a bestselling novel of the same name, it stars Juno Temple as a woman who gets to experience life with a different partner every time she changes the light bulb in her attic.

“I’m very picky with stuff I take on. Because I love writing my own work so much, anything that takes me out on someone else’s show has to be very special. And this was very special,” Gadd says.

“Everything I do doesn’t have to be dark,” he adds with a soft smile.