Peter Andre has revealed he’s still dealing with the psychological fallout after a topless photo taken by a paparazzi sent his confidence spiralling.
Andre, 50, rose to fame in the mid 1990s with hit single ‘Mysterious Girl’, later going on to feature in the third series of I’m a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! in 2004, where he met ex-wife Katie Price, with whom he shares teenage kids Junior, 18 and Princess, 15.
The singer is now married to Emily MacDonagh, 33, and has two younger children with the doctor - Amelia, nine, and Theo, six.
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While the star became a household name almost 30 years ago after showing off his six pack in a music video as he danced around in the water to his pop-reggae anthem, he has now admitted he actually suffered serious insecurities about his body – which still affect him to this day.
In a new interview with OK, Andre spoke about a photo taken by a member of the press in the Bahamas, which had taken him by surprise.
The headlines at the time suggested he had gained a great deal of weight, comparing himself to Brendan Fraser in The Whale, which sees the actor play a 600lb recluse called Charlie as he tries to reconnect with his teenage daughter.
Recalling the photo that triggered a difficult relationship with his own body, Andre said: “I was alone on a beach in the Bahamas, so I took my shirt off and went in the water.
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"The sea was really rough and when I came out I remember I was gasping. There was some paparazzi photographer in the trees and he must have caught me breathing out.
“The photo got sent all around the world and it was the first time people had seen me like that since the early days.
“I remember the headlines – ‘Andre piles on the pack’. People who were heavier than me might have thought, ‘But he looks alright’, but in my mind I looked like Brendan Fraser in The Whale.
"We never see what other people see."
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The effect of this sent his confidence spiralling, with him adding: “Now, I’ve got this psychological link to something and it’s stopping me just freely walking around the beach – I just won’t do it. It’s ridiculous.”
Andre is a self-confessed yo-yo dieter, saying there was a time in his thirties when he ‘didn’t care about training’.
He said he subsequently gained 3st from eating ‘pizza, Chinese, anything I could get my hands on, all day, every day’.
Topics: Celebrity, Mental Health, Health
Jess Hardiman