Singer Tommy Fleming tense reaction to Lucy Kennedy probing question about his doomed marriage, on chat show he agreed to be on, leads to bizarre TV clash

Singer Tommy Fleming clashed with TV presenter Lucy Kennedy when she pressed him over suggestions that he had been unfaithful in his marriage to Tina Mitchell in a pre-arranged interview.

In the chat with Kennedy on her new Virgin Media chat show, Unfiltered, the now openly gay entertainer spoke about the ‘s*** storm’ that surrounded the breakdown of his marriage since a leaked phone call forced him to reveal his sexuality.

‘It’s been a strange road to navigate, but it’s a lot easier to navigate this one than the one I had to navigate,’ the Sligo star says in his first televised interview since the leaked call went viral earlier this year.

‘It’s been tough, you know. It’s not been an easy ride, and I didn’t expect it to be. Don’t get me wrong. It’s been very sad. That’s one word that stands out for me. There’s a sadness attached to all of this.’

But the singer became visibly irked when asked about rumours of affairs during his marriage to Tina.

‘I’ve already discussed this. I’m not going on this one with this,’ he replies. Pressed on the matter by Kennedy, he says: ‘I’ve spent months answering these questions. 

'We’ve all been through a lot. Let me rephrase that... we’ve all been through a s*** storm. And to be perfectly honest, you asking, sitting here asking those questions, is bringing me right back there. 

'You want the truth, or whoever wants the truth, you’re forgetting one thing. This is my life.’

The 55-year-old added he felt he was ‘forced’ to reveal his sexuality after a recording of the call was widely shared online.

‘In many ways, my hands were forced due to a recording that was made,’ he says. ‘A friend of mine rang me to say that he had received this WhatsApp message with the recording of it. And have you ever been in a situation where you know when people say the oxygen was taken out of the room, but this is when it leaves your body.

‘God, and there’s a feeling of hopelessness. There’s a feeling of “how am I going to do this? Maybe it won’t pick up”. And boy, did it pick up.’

Asked if he knew who leaked the call, now the subject of a Garda investigation, he would only say: ‘I have my suspicions here.’

In a previous interview with the Sunday Independent, Tina said she felt Fleming was ‘stringing’ her along. But the singer hit back at that suggestion saying: ‘There was no stringing along… for 22 years, I was very happy.’

The singer also talked about how he tried to take his own life last September following the breakdown of his marriage.

‘Tina and I decided to separate, and mentally I was not in a very good place at all. You know... it’s just I was very broken and, I suppose everybody knows at this point in here, I made an attempt on my life in September.

‘It was September the 21st, which then led to a hospital admission in St Pat’s. I was diagnosed with depression and acute anxiety.

‘I spent seven weeks in St Pat’s, and in those seven weeks, there was, you know, I had a phone call with Tina and it was recorded. I didn’t know it was recorded.

‘If I knew it was recorded, I certainly wouldn’t discuss the stuff I discussed on it. And that’s the kind of catalyst in all of this. That’s the kind of... to me was a betrayal. You have to unpack a lot to try and figure that one out.’

Asked if his sexuality was the catalyst for his drug and alcohol addiction, which resulted in him checking into the psychiatric facility, Fleming replies: ‘It would have been certainly a contributing factor. You don’t continue that life for so long without it having some effect.

‘When you start to work with the professionals like psychiatrists and psychologists and all of that, you’ve got a team that’s working around you.

‘I suppose you learn to accept who you are.’

• Unfiltered with Lucy Kennedy airs on Virgin Media Play and Virgin Media One from 9pm tonight.