Boxing champion Tyson Fury stepped in for Jamie Cullum to sing out an episode of The Jonathan Ross Show on Saturday night.
‘The Gypsy King’ made the gesture after speaking to Ross alongside Dame Joan Collins, comedian Russell Kane, and presenter Maya Jama.
Tyson also discusses his weight loss and the mental health struggles behind it, saying: “I was 28 stone. It took me about seven months.
“I can put weight on very quickly. I can also take it off quickly. But I didn’t put that on overnight. That was two and a half years of not training and not doing anything.
“It was depression, anxiety, and mental health problems. It was the first two and a half years where I didn’t do any training for a long period of time.
“I was eating takeaways and drinking a lot of beer and stuff like that. I put a lot of weight on.”
He continues: “I’ve always suffered from mental health problems my whole life, but I didn’t really know what it was. Even as a kid, I used to have anxiety.
“I didn’t know what it was until I got diagnosed at 29 years old.
“I come from a fighting family. Everyone’s a tough guy. No one speaks about their feelings. All my friends, family look at me like I’m some superhero.
“They don’t think of me as a man or a normal person. When I come out with all that sort of stuff, everyone’s like, ‘What, this person’s got weakness?’
“For a long, long period of time, I bottled it all up. It came to a point where it was like an explosion, shaking a bottle of champagne, and it exploded.”
He adds: “It was like if you’ve got this, keep it to yourself, don’t broadcast it. I thought, there’s got to be other people like me out there suffering. Even if I help one person, I’ll feel better about it.”
On his lowest point, he says: “2016 I was really, really ill. I’d been planning suicide for quite a long time – I’d been planning it in my head, what I was going to do.
“I didn’t think I’d have the minerals to do it. This one day, I thought, ‘This is the day.’ I got into a red Ferrari, got up to a high speed, I was going to crash into a motorway bridge.
“As I was heading towards that bridge, flying, I got a few hundred yards ago, had this voice speak to me and say ‘don’t do this, you’re going to destroy your family’s life, your kids will grow up without a father.’
“So I pulled over. I could feel my heart beating in my chest, I was sweating, I was in a right state. For the first moment in time I realised I couldn’t do it on my own and needed medical help.”
TYSON FURY in for JAMIE CULLUM
Of seeking help, Tyson says: “I started to see a therapist. After going there a couple of times, I realized, if I’d done this 10 years ago, I’d have had a much happier, better life.”
Tyson also discusses singing at the end of his fights. After Jamie Cullum was unable to join the show after a member of his team tested positive for Covid, Tyson offers to sing the show out and perform American Pie.
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