He also regularly appears on Celebrity Gogglebox with his mother, Linda, and hosts his own Saturday radio show on BBC Radio 2. But sometimes those lives cross over. If you go out for dinner, people are going to come up to you. I just became a massive recluse. I wouldn’t go out. I felt like I couldn’t walk up the street. I felt like I couldn’t go to the pub. But what I’ve learned over the last year is, ‘So what if people come and say hello? Let it happen. Then you can enjoy yourself.’ I’ve learned, actually, the blur between the two ain’t that far off.”

The Strictly It Takes Two host said on the Happy Place podcast: "My body did completely shut down. I wouldn't eat. I went through a stage where I couldn't even talk, which for some people might be quite handy. My speech was just slurred. My mum thought I was having a stroke. My body just went. I went down to 9st and I am six-foot-four." He then sought help and spent time in a mental health hospital. Speaking at an event in London on Wednesday night, Rylan reflected on that time and the Mirror reports him saying: "It is no secret that my marriage broke down last year. And I disappeared for five or six months and people knew when I didn't turn up for work that something was wrong because I am always on f****g telly, you know what I mean?verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{

The couple went their separate ways after six years of marriage, and Rylan has been candid about the struggles he’s faced since then. Clark is funny and formidable company, full of quippy, brazen one-liners and with such a fondness for the F-word that I am amazed he managed to hold down so many jobs on live TV. He’s talking to me in the plush, open-plan kitchen of his Essex home, which he renovated himself. It has a custom-made Big Brother “diary room”, a gym, a replica train station, a swimming pool, and a floor-to-ceiling tank that once housed three moon jellyfish called Beyoncé, Kelly and Michelle. That is, until Kelly ate Michelle, Beyoncé ate Kelly, and Beyoncé dissolved.Clark writes about all this with that classic Rylan mix of sincerity and wit. At one point, he writes that he needed to go away to hospital because his mum, who’d been taking care of him, had her own life to live – “admittedly mainly spent down at Lakeside in the M&S cafe”. Later, he pauses to insist: “This is not meant to be a WOE IS ME, POOR RYLAN! BOO HOO HOO story btw” (it’s a very colloquial kind of book). It seems, I say, like he’s wary of being seen as a victim. “It’s not woe is me,” he insists. “It’s not woe is me in the slightest. It’s what happened.” He smiles, flashing his teeth – not the blindingly white, oversized veneers he got in 2013, and had chiselled out last year, which we’ll get to later, but a pretty dazzling set nonetheless. But now if there’s something I really don’t want to do, I’m going to say no. I’ve learned to be more in control. I’ve not had control for so long, I feel like Britney!’ Rylan said he then went into "self blame" mode and felt his life was over and spent time hiding at his mum's house. He writes: "And for the first time in thirty two years I felt I couldn't carry on no more. What's the point I thought. I'd lost what I thought was everything, the one thing I always wanted. A man I loved. A family of my own. And now it was gone. And so I tried to end it." Anyway. He didn’t win The X Factor, but it got him onto Celebrity Big Brother, a show he had adored growing up. He walked out the winner, and was asked to host Big Brother’s Bit on the Side. It turned out that innate charm doesn’t teach you how to read an autocue.

In January, The Mirror published a video of him on a night out, in which he giggles the words, “Gimme the gear.” It was, he writes in his book, “in the middle of the street, in public, and clearly I was making a joke”. But he doesn’t care about that now. The aim is that by sharing practical advice, raising awareness and breaking down the barriers people face when talking about their mental health, we can all do our bit to help save lives. This is Rylan as you've never seen him before - an intimate, fascinating and joyful insight into an extraordinary ten years on the telly and in our hearts.

Follow us

It would be overly simplistic, but not altogether inaccurate, to say that little Ross Clark found comfort in the dream of becoming a star. In an era where reality TV made people bona fide A-listers, it didn’t seem that out of reach. Especially if he wasn’t fussy about how he got there. “I didn’t care what the job was,” he says. “I just wanted the fame.” Speaking to The Guardian, he said: ‘I was having thoughts and doing things that made me… f**ked up, for want of a better word. The new memoir begins with that breakdown – “I thought I might as well jump straight in, get it out the way,” he says – and describes in stark, painful detail the worst year of his life. It tells of how Clark woke up one morning and, for reasons he didn’t yet understand, confessed to his then-husband Dan Neal that he had once cheated on him. Things unravelled from there. Neal left him. He stopped eating. He stopped talking. He stopped sleeping. He pulled out of work commitments, including presenting his beloved Eurovision. Then he tried to take his own life. Rylan Clark on Celebrity Masterchef (Photo: BBC/Shine TV)