Exclusive interview with Myleene: 'I took a bullet to my heart'
By JANE GORDON
EXCLUSIVE In her first interview since her shock marriage break-up, Myleene Klass bares her heart to Jane Gordon
Suit, sandro. Bra, myla. Earrings, annoushka. Rings, de beers, mawi and annoushka
When Myleene Klass arrives for our interview – straight from the school run and clutching a can
of Diet Coke (‘my crutch of caffeine’) – she very politely requests that she should ask the first question. ‘In most interviews I don’t measure my words or often engage my brain, but I am so nervous about this, more than any other interview I have ever given. So do you mind if I take my time?’ she asks.
of Diet Coke (‘my crutch of caffeine’) – she very politely requests that she should ask the first question. ‘In most interviews I don’t measure my words or often engage my brain, but I am so nervous about this, more than any other interview I have ever given. So do you mind if I take my time?’ she asks.
Today Myleene will be talking publicly for the first time in the six months since Graham (‘Gray’) – her partner of 11 years, husband of seven months, and father of her two young children – announced that he was leaving her. She has spent her time since that fateful day in April (reportedly her birthday) ‘battening down the hatches’ and only now is she ready to try to express the impact his sudden departure has had on herself and her daughters Ava, five, and Hero, 18 months.
It will be difficult for her not just because, for legal reasons, she cannot talk directly about her estranged husband, but also because she is still emotionally fragile (we will both cry at least three times during the next hour and a half) and anxious to protect her daughters. But it will also be cathartic and give her an opportunity to show the public that she is not a victim (‘There was no way – NO WAY – I was going to sink’) and that you can emerge from the most difficult times in your life with dignity and strength.
'It's been the hardest six months of my life'
‘You see, I thought Gray and I were so happy. I had just walked down the aisle, so of course
I didn’t see it coming – I hadn’t even got my wedding dress back from the cleaners,’ she says. ‘When it first happened and I was in the middle of the storm I was just so very, very hurt. I felt I would sooner have taken a bullet. Actually, at the beginning, every morning when I woke up, I thought I had taken a bullet to my heart. It’s so unfair that people call it “heartbreak” because that word almost romanticises something that is beyond pain. It is all-consuming, it is debilitating because you cannot move – cannot do or think of anything else for the sake of a wound that you cannot see, that no one can see…’
I didn’t see it coming – I hadn’t even got my wedding dress back from the cleaners,’ she says. ‘When it first happened and I was in the middle of the storm I was just so very, very hurt. I felt I would sooner have taken a bullet. Actually, at the beginning, every morning when I woke up, I thought I had taken a bullet to my heart. It’s so unfair that people call it “heartbreak” because that word almost romanticises something that is beyond pain. It is all-consuming, it is debilitating because you cannot move – cannot do or think of anything else for the sake of a wound that you cannot see, that no one can see…’
Myleene isn’t looking for sympathy. There is, she says, very little difference between her experience of the pain of rejection and that of any other woman – or, for that matter, man – who has received a bullet to their heart.
‘Your love for someone isn’t a tap – you can’t switch it on and off. It doesn’t matter who you are or what reasons they give for leaving you – it doesn’t matter if they run off to join a circus
or if they run off with Cindy Crawford. It hurts. There were days when I didn’t want to get out of bed and my mum would say to me, “It’s OK, you are just grieving.” And she was right – it is a kind of grief, a grief that you have to work through.’
or if they run off with Cindy Crawford. It hurts. There were days when I didn’t want to get out of bed and my mum would say to me, “It’s OK, you are just grieving.” And she was right – it is a kind of grief, a grief that you have to work through.’
Blazer, sandro. Bib, mr start woman at start london. Trousers, stella mccartney, from matches. Earrings, annoushka. Bangle, kurt geiger
Where Myleene’s experience has been different is that her grief was played out in public and inevitably became the subject of a media storm. It emerged that Gray’s exit had been carefully planned – he swiftly moved into a bachelor flat – and there were rumours that two months before the split, while working on security for The X Factor tour, he had become close to 25-year-old dancer Sarah Robinson, who had formerly been linked to X Factor winner Matt Cardle.
‘I withdrew, I couldn’t grieve in public. On the day that I knew Gray had really gone – for logistical reasons I cannot go into – I had to leave the family house too. I didn’t fall apart because I knew that above everything else the children needed me to be strong for them. So I did the school run as usual, because I wanted to make sure Ava was settled. And then I went home and packed what I thought I needed into the car. In the front I put my handbag with my credit card and my phone – my essential life administration – and my music, and then I put the baby in her seat in the back and drove to pick up Ava from school and put her in the back, too. Then I drove for about a mile and just stopped the car, turned around and looked at the girls, and I thought, “I have everything I need; I have got it all here.”
‘It was a good lesson in the sense that I think you can lose sight of what you have,’ she says. ‘I realised looking at my daughters that what I have is massive – as I say now every day to Ava, “I have one arm for you and I have one arm for Hero and this is our unit.” The children have been my absolute salvation.’
Myleene met Irish-born Graham Quinn, 38, in 2001 when he became bodyguard to her band, the five-strong Hear’Say (winners of Popstars, the short-lived reality talent show that was a forerunner to The X Factor). They were, it has to be said, always a rather unlikely couple. Myleene was raised in Norfolk by her Anglo-Austrian father and her Filipina mother and, at the age of 18, won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music, becoming an accomplished musician (she plays piano, violin and harp). Graham, meanwhile, had grown up on a council estate in Dublin and, in his early 20s, when he was arrested for heroin possession, had jumped bail, moved to Britain, changed his name and started working as a bodyguard. In 2003, when his criminal past was exposed in the press, he voluntarily returned to Dublin with Myleene, as ever, loyally standing by his side. He received a fine and a suspended prison sentence. The couple became engaged in 2005 and married last October, in a secret ceremony attended by just 16 people.
Myleene met Irish-born Graham Quinn, 38, in 2001 when he became bodyguard to her band, the five-strong Hear’Say (winners of Popstars, the short-lived reality talent show that was a forerunner to The X Factor). They were, it has to be said, always a rather unlikely couple. Myleene was raised in Norfolk by her Anglo-Austrian father and her Filipina mother and, at the age of 18, won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music, becoming an accomplished musician (she plays piano, violin and harp). Graham, meanwhile, had grown up on a council estate in Dublin and, in his early 20s, when he was arrested for heroin possession, had jumped bail, moved to Britain, changed his name and started working as a bodyguard. In 2003, when his criminal past was exposed in the press, he voluntarily returned to Dublin with Myleene, as ever, loyally standing by his side. He received a fine and a suspended prison sentence. The couple became engaged in 2005 and married last October, in a secret ceremony attended by just 16 people.
‘I thought Gray and I were so happy. I had just walked down the aisle, so of course I didn’t see it coming – I hadn’t even got my wedding dress back from the cleaners’
Variously described in press reports as ‘monosyllabic’ and ‘shady’, Gray has nonetheless managed to establish a successful career in the security industry and is security manager for JLS and a number of other high-profile artists. Subsequent to their split, Gray has given a press interview in which he refuted leaving Myleene on her birthday (6 April) claiming that he wouldn’t do that because ‘I’ve spent 11 years with the girl’ – a phrase, I say to Myleene, that struck me as crudely dismissive of a serious relationship that produced two children.
Variously described in press reports as ‘monosyllabic’ and ‘shady’, Gray has nonetheless managed to establish a successful career in the security industry and is security manager for JLS and a number of other high-profile artists. Subsequent to their split, Gray has given a press interview in which he refuted leaving Myleene on her birthday (6 April) claiming that he wouldn’t do that because ‘I’ve spent 11 years with the girl’ – a phrase, I say to Myleene, that struck me as crudely dismissive of a serious relationship that produced two children.
‘“The girl” – what can I say? I can only deal with and process what I know, and I don’t know what’s going on with Gray,’ she says. ‘I can’t speak for him. I can only speak for myself and all I can say is that it has been the hardest six months of my life.’
Myleene is without a doubt a strong woman. In the past she’s beaten school bullies, who teased her about her glasses and bookishness, and media bullies, who gave her such a hard time after Hear’Say broke up. She is also an unashamed feminist. ‘I believe in women. I believe in their power,’ she says, but when Gray left her she was so devastated that she questioned her ability to go on.
‘Everyone around me kept urging me on by saying to me that the bad things that happen to you in life make you stronger. I remember one day asking a friend, “How strong do I have to be? Like kryptonite?” And she said, “No, you have to be like bamboo – be malleable, keep on bending but still be strong.”’
Jacket, billionaire couture. Necklace, mawi. Earrings, niin, from my flash trash
In many ways, being able to ‘bend but not break’ like bamboo is not just the secret of Myleene’s emotional survival in the past six months; it is also, perhaps, the secret of the success of her ever-expanding and diversifying career. She is very self-deprecating, describing herself as ‘totally mediocre’ and putting her considerable achievements down to her ability ‘to graft’. But, in truth, she is clever, talented, beautiful (but not a bit vain), funny and fearlessly able to take on new challenges. It was her appearance in 2006 on I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! that was to take her then declining career in several new directions (she looked so sensational showering in a white bikini that she became a face of Marks & Spencer, and her charm and personality opened up new opportunities as a TV presenter).
Since April, when she ‘withdrew’ in order to get ‘my children and myself on a true course again’ (for the first few weeks they stayed with her parents and friends, but they now have a ‘wonderful’ new home), she has made few public appearances. In June she presented the second of the Jubilee concerts in Hyde Park and in August she travelled to China to present Miss World, accompanied, as she always is when she works abroad, by her girls.
‘When you are going through a difficult time you want to stop the world and get off. But I’ve learnt that the world moves on’
It is her love for her daughters, and the love she gets from them, that is the chief reason she has managed to ‘stay sane’. But she also acknowledges that she would not be able to be here today – talking so openly – if it were not for the support of the tight group of friends and family that she says
‘I could almost deploy as a force-field around me’. Everyone from her best male friend and publicist Simon Jones, who took her and the children in on the day she had to leave her home, to her parents who now live 15 minutes away, her younger siblings Don and Jessie, both of whom live in Australia, and her closest girlfriends, such as TV and radio presenter Lauren Laverne, have played a part in helping her work out her ‘grief’.
‘I could almost deploy as a force-field around me’. Everyone from her best male friend and publicist Simon Jones, who took her and the children in on the day she had to leave her home, to her parents who now live 15 minutes away, her younger siblings Don and Jessie, both of whom live in Australia, and her closest girlfriends, such as TV and radio presenter Lauren Laverne, have played a part in helping her work out her ‘grief’.
‘Oh my God, Lauren! I remember her knocking on my door one day and walking in and putting a big tub of ice cream with two spoons on the table and saying to me “Talk and eat!” My friends were like my backbone when I didn’t feel I had one. I am so appreciative that they all let me talk, talk, talk. Not once did any of them say “stop talking about it” or “stop crying”,’ she says, reaching for another tissue.
LEFT: Myleene on holiday in Barbados with Graham and their daughters Ava and Hero in January, just months before the couple’s marriage broke down, and right, all smiles with her two girls at Heathrow in August
Now, although she still has the odd bad day, she is ready to move on and is anxious to pass on to other women the positive message that the ‘unseen wounds’ of heartbreak do slowly heal. ‘When you are going through a very difficult time you want to stop the world and get off, just to catch your breath. But in the past six months I have learnt that the world moves on: in that time two of my friends have got married, two have had babies and two have lost their dads – life doesn’t stop for anybody. And although at first that seems cruel it’s actually good because you have to go with it. There has been so much that is good in that six months; Ava has started school and Hero has learnt to walk and talk – well, she says, “Nice to meet you” and “banana!”’ Myleene says, pulling out her iPhone to show me a video of Hero talking and another of Ava puzzling over her homework.
Legally, Myleene can’t talk about Gray’s involvement with their girls (in June he said that suggestions he hadn’t seen his daughters were ‘rubbish’, adding, somewhat revealingly, that he had in fact seen them ‘a couple of times’). When I suggest that perhaps some men find fatherhood easier than others, she rolls her eyes and says, ‘Now that is dangerous territory, I can’t even dare go there.’
Final proof of her recovery, and her ability to move on, is the gusto with which she has thrown herself into a clutch of new projects. Her parents instilled in her a strong work ethic and she has good entrepreneurial instincts – her Baby K brand of children’s clothes is now sold in Mothercare in
38 countries, she has just designed a new range of shoes for Start-rite, and she also has her own line of ‘instant nails’. Her latest venture, a range of clothes for Littlewoods, has exceeded the company’s forecasts by 14 per cent. She says it works because she isn’t ‘cool’, and she designs for mums, not for Lady Gaga. Her plan, she says, is to grow a ‘little empire’ that will inspire her daughters.
38 countries, she has just designed a new range of shoes for Start-rite, and she also has her own line of ‘instant nails’. Her latest venture, a range of clothes for Littlewoods, has exceeded the company’s forecasts by 14 per cent. She says it works because she isn’t ‘cool’, and she designs for mums, not for Lady Gaga. Her plan, she says, is to grow a ‘little empire’ that will inspire her daughters.
Will she be able to love and trust a man again? ‘I don’t want to sound like Oprah but no person should be able to take away your ability to love and trust. I will always love but I don’t think I will
ever again give anyone the power to destroy my trust,’ she says.
ever again give anyone the power to destroy my trust,’ she says.
However much she might try to deny it, Myleene is ravishing (Prince Philip once said to her: ‘You’re fit, aren’t you?’). Have men started to hit on her? ‘You know, I don’t think I would notice if they had. I can’t even go there,’ she says. ‘My priority is being strong for my girls so that they will grow up to be strong women. It’s funny, the other day at home I wanted to move a table to the other side of a room, and Ava said to me, “Mama, shouldn’t we get a man to move that? I don’t think you are strong enough.” And I said to her, “Ava, you do know that it isn’t just men that are strong – women can be strong in lots of ways.” And she said, “I know Mama, women can be strong in their hearts and their minds.” At that moment I thought, “Wow! It’s gone through; she’s bored of hearing it, but it’s gone through!”’
Myleene’s debut children’s shoe range for Start-rite is available now. Her winter range of clothes and lingerie for littlewoods.com is also available now
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