Flack says Norton's BAFTA joke was his "lowest point"

Caroline Flack spoke about her fight against the depression that began in 2014, stating in the British tabloid Sunday Sunday that his "lowest point" came to BAFTA television in 2016, when host Graham Norton joked about the likelihood of his return X factor presenter.

the Island of love Star and singer Olly Murs has received many critics after succeeding Dermot O 'Leary X factor In 2015, Flack told the newspaper that she was "kidding" by trying to impress the ITV show while dealing with mental health issues.

"We were slammed week after week and we could not do anything good," she continued.

"I would have been able to walk on the water for a week and have been told that I did not know how to swim." Even though I had gone there, did seven pirouettes and the splits, and magically took rabbits out of my hat, people would be gone. " But where is Dermot? & # 39 ;. I was delivering a lost battle in advance. "

At the British Academy Television Awards in May 2016, host Norton joked that viewers might have a better chance of seeing Anne Boleyn, who was performing, come back for the second series of BBC Two's historical drama. Wolf Hall that Flack coming back as X factor presenter.

"I was sitting in my dress, I had no more one, and Graham's first joke was basically:" There is more chance that Anne Boleyn will come back to Wolf Hall"Flack recounted.

"I'm sure it was pretty funny but not so much when you are the person who lives this life sitting in the BAFTA and the cameras are on you.

"I remember the person next to me touching my arm sympathetically and just trying not to cry, I went home pretty soon after, it was really horrible and my lowest point."

Flack said his fight against depression began after his coronation Strictly Come Dancing champion in December 2014.

"It all started the day after I won Strictly," she said. "I woke up and felt as if someone had covered me with a stretch film.

"I could not get up and I could not get up at all next year I felt silly, so sad when I came to win the biggest TV show and I had a job unbelievable.

"However, I felt like I was holding on with a piece of string that could snap at any moment.

"People see the lifestyle of celebrities and badume that everything is perfect, but we are like everyone else.Everyone is fighting against something emotional behind closed doors – that's life Celebrity does not make you happy.

"Antidepressants have helped me get up in the morning and have prevented me from being sad, but they also prevent you from being happy.

"Then I was just in that numbed state.I stopped laughing jokes, and it's just not me."

"I left them after six months, when I realized that feeling something was better than feeling nothing at all."

Flack, who celebrated a BAFTA victory for Island of love in May and debuts in the West End Chicago, said she wanted to help eliminate the stigma surrounding mental health.

"You would tell people if you took Nurofen or Lemsip, but no antidepressants," she continued.

"There is a stigma around that, I had a habit of going to the pharmacist to get my prescription back on a Sunday, thinking that the pharmacist probably had seen me on TV the night before." previous night.

"I was mortified, what I know now is ridiculous and everything was in my head."

If you have been affected by issues raised in this article, visit www.rte.ie/helplines.