‘Wait a minute, Mum, are you sure…?’ POP legend Lulu CANDIDLY SHARED her struggles with her son live on This Morning
Lulu has confessed to being “very secretive” about her struggle with alcoholism due to feeling “so ashamed”.
The 76-year-old pop icon recently shared her battle with alcohol for the first time, revealing that she managed to hide her drinking problem from her family and music industry friends, including Sir Elton John. While on This Morning on Wednesday, she said: “It was never bad because I was never a fall-down drunk.
“My son didn’t know. He said: ‘Wait a minute, Mum, are you sure … ?’ and Elton [John] said: ‘How the f**k did I miss that?'” Immediately after, Lulu apologised for her language on live TV, saying: “I’m so sorry, I am so sorry. Also, it’s me trying to push the story. How did I miss that?”
She continued: “I was very secretive, I was so ashamed of it. I would go out and have a drink, a couple of drinks. I would go home and have another drink. You know you’re an alcoholic if you can’t stop. I have a lot of friends who have a drink and say: ‘Oh, I’ve had enough,’ but I couldn’t do that..
“I was a highly functioning alcoholic, that’s why nobody knew. I would fall asleep sozzled. I’d set the alarm, wake up for work the next day, brush myself off and go to work.” Lulu also revealed how she confessed her secret to her sister, who encouraged the singer to check herself into a rehab clinic in 2013.
She said: “I had a birthday party and everyone left except my sister and her kids because two of them live with me. My niece said: ‘Oh so and so, he’s hanging on by his fingernails’ … Talking about his problem with alcohol, and I don’t know where it came from, I said: ‘He’s not the only one’.
“My sister said very kindly: ‘I know, and I’ve known for some time’. The cat was out of the bag. It was if someone up there liked me. I now had to get sharing. I couldn’t ask for help before but in that moment I looked at my sister and said: ‘I have to go to rehab, don’t I?’ She said: ‘I think so.’ I was there the next day.”
Lulu has recently opened up about her struggle with addiction during a candid chat with The Times, admitting: “I was a secret drinker. I think I always wanted to be Miss Perfect, the ‘best Lulu’, and I was terrified of being like my father.
“For years, I made a choice not to talk about [my alcoholism] publicly. I chose to wait until I had the language to understand it before I could start spouting off.”
The pop star explained how she wanted to be “the best Lulu” at all times, which was heightened as she shot to fame. She performed alongside her band The Luvvers, with Shout reaching number seven in the UK singles chart, and went on to have 10 UK top 10 singles and one top 10 album.
She said that after hitting the menopause and losing both her parents, as well as her children leaving home, she became more reliant on alcohol, and it started to deteriorate rapidly. Lulu decided to keep quiet about what she witnessed at home as she feared her parents would be seen as “bad people”.
Now, she believes they were “damaged” but continues to carry shame about their actions. Lulu said her alcoholism was “the culmination of a life spent trying to suppress feelings,” and continuing her public image.
