Lulu opened up about how she hid her alcoholism from the world after admitting this week she was a ‘secret drinker’ for years and believes she inherited the gene.
The singer, 76, who is now in recovery and attended rehab, made the admission in an interview with The Times ahead of the release of her memoir, If Only You Knew, which she said she needed therapy after writing.
During the bombshell interview, Lulu told the publication: ‘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.’
But in past interviews, Lulu hinted at how she kept that part of her life out of the spotlight and always appeared polished and perfect in public.
She told how she always put her career first and was instructed by her mother from an early age not to ‘air her dirty linen in public’, perhaps suggesting why her addiction battle has remained secret until now.
Lulu opened up about how she hid her alcoholism from the world after admitting this week she was a ‘secret drinker’ for years and believes she inherited the gene (stock image 2025)
The singer, 76, who is now in recovery and attended rehab, made the admission in an interview with The Times ahead of the release of her memoir, If Only You Knew, which she said she needed therapy after writing (pictured in 1970)
The famously private star said that she always saw her stage persona as a different person to who she was off stage, meaning that the public didn’t have full access to parts of her personal life that she chose to keep hidden.
She told the Daily Mail in 2012: ‘I’ve always tended to put my career first. It’s been who I am for almost 50 years — I can’t imagine life without it. I became a performer, even when I wasn’t on stage. The light on the TV camera went on and, instantly, I became this creature called Lulu.’
Lulu’s desire to keep the less attractive parts of her life hidden appeared to have been ingrained from an early age, as she revealed earlier this year that it was encouraged by her mother, Betty McDonald.
Speaking to the Sun in May, she said: ‘I was brought up by a mother who would constantly nag me and say, ‘Don’t wash your dirty linen in public’. ‘The message I got was, ‘Don’t tell anybody anything. Keep it to yourself’. So they became secrets.’
‘There’s a lot of things in my life I have never spoken about that I talk about in this book. It’s been intense. I’ve had to go into therapy. It’s been quite a thing this past year.’
Revealing that a friend encouraged her to write the autobiography because of her predisposition to keep things private, she said: ‘Somebody said to me, ‘People think they know Lulu, but nobody knows you’. And that really hit me.’
The Eurovision star, who is best known for her 1964 single Shout, revealed this week how she spent years facing ‘dark’ moments and battling ‘shame’ which left her in rehab.
She went on to say her alcoholism got worse as she got older and her son, Jordan Frieda, now 48, left home.
In a new interview, Lulu has said: ‘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’ (pictured in 2003)
She said: ‘For me, it had been controllable until I got into my sixties.
‘After I became menopausal, with both my parents gone, the empty nest, looking around and seeing all the young kids in the music industry, I became more and more reliant on it and so it just got worse.
‘For many years, and I can’t say how many, I had not been happy with the way I felt, not at all happy and [yet] unable to ask for help.’
Lulu then detailed some scarring moments from her upbringing, such as witnessing violent domestic abuse between her father and her mother and the time her dad was ‘dragged away’ by police.
‘It’s a family illness,’ she said. ‘The gene is there.’
While she feared people perceiving her parents as ‘bad people’, she now says they were ‘damaged’, but she also ‘carried so much shame’ about their actions.
Lulu believes her alcoholism was ‘the culmination of a life spent trying to suppress feelings’, having always supported her family and under pressure to uphold a professional image.
The singer went on to say that she has now ‘never been happier in life’.
Lulu then detailed some scarring moments from her upbringing, such as witnessing violent domestic abuse between her father and her mother ‘It’s a family illness,’ she said (L-R with her siblings, actress Edwina Lawrie, Billy Lawrie, and Lulu in 1983)
She said: ‘The thing about drink is that you become the worst part of who you really are. You can be happy and singing and having fun, but that doesn’t last.
‘If you keep drinking, you can become morose. We can become angry. I worked so hard to understand this. I finally understood it’s an illness that messes with everything.
‘So I know it sounds perverse, but I’m glad I’m an alcoholic and that I’m in recovery.’
These days, Lulu, who has been married twice, firstly to Maurice Gibb from 1969 to 1973, then to John Frieda from 1977 to 1991, said she is living in a much ‘brighter’ world, residing in central London with her cockapoo.
She’s also determined to persist with her career ‘until [she] drops’.
All is revealed in Lulu’s memoir If Only You Knew, out September 25.
This article was originally published by a www.dailymail.co.uk . Read the Original article here. .