'I WAS CLOSE TO DEATH - BUT KEPT DRINKING'

BRAVE MICHELLE HEATON ON HER BATTLE WITH ALCOHOL AND HOW DANCING ON ICE HAS GIVEN HER A FRESH START

Taking part in Dancing On Ice is more than just a job as far as Michelle Heaton is concerned. After battling three dark, destructive years of alcohol addiction that almost tore her family apart, the former Liberty X singer reveals she wept with gratitude when she got the call from ITV bosses – and was comforted by her daughter Faith at their Hertfordshire home.

Speaking to OK! alongside husband Hugh Hanley ahead of the second live show, she says, “It was a very intense couple of days waiting for the call. I had no idea whether it would be me or someone else.

“My daughter Faith and her friends were in the living room. I took the call from my agent, Ali, and went into the utility room. Faith followed me and I started to cry. She looked at me and said, ‘Oh no, haven’t you got it?’ and I was like, ‘No, Mummy’s got it.’ She started to cry with me and hugged me quietly because she knew she couldn’t tell her friends.

“It was just this overwhelming sense of gratitude. A few years ago I was considered for Dancing On Ice and was gutted that I wasn’t chosen. Obviously, I understand now why it wasn’t the right time.”

Michelle, who also has an eight-year-old son, AJ, with Hugh, hit rock bottom in January 2020 when she was drinking up to a bottle of vodka and two bottles of wine a day, and snorting cocaine. It was a terrifying climax to becoming dependent on alcohol while suffering from hormonal depression after a hysterectomy. The operation, to reduce her risk of breast and ovarian cancers after learning she carries the mutated BRCA2 gene, also triggered her early menopause at the age of 34.