Rylan Clark breaks silence on affair that ended his marriage
The television presenter has opened up about guilt, heartbreak and recovery while reflecting on the collapse of his relationship and finding happiness again after years of personal struggles.
Rylan Clark is “glad” he confessed to cheating on former husband Dan Neal.
Telling a television show panel the guilt of keeping the secret made him “so ill” before the collapse of their six-year marriage, Rylan, 37, addressed the breakdown of his relationship with Dan during an appearance on ITV’s The Assembly, the programme in which celebrities face unfiltered questions from a panel of autistic, neurodivergent and learning-disabled interviewers.
The presenter was asked directly whether he regretted admitting his infidelity after Dan divorced him following the confession in 2021.
The discussion marks one of the most candid public reflections Rylan has made on the end of the marriage that prompted him to step away from work and later discuss his mental health struggles in detail.
Rylan was asked: “When you told your husband you cheated on him, he divorced you. Is honesty always the best policy?” The presenter replied: “Yeah, I think it is. I'm okay admitting I'm in the wrong, because actually I don't deal well with guilt, and I don't deal well with secrets.
“It made me so ill, like so ill. It sounds a terrible thing to say, but I'm glad it happened.”
The presenter, who first rose to fame on The X Factor before becoming one of British television’s most recognisable personalities through Big Brother’s Bit on the Side, This Morning, Strictly Come Dancing: It Takes Two and BBC Radio 2, was also asked whether he missed his former husband.
When asked: “What do you miss about Dan, if anything?”, Rylan replied: “Do you know, I never think about him”.
He went on to describe the emotional collapse that followed the breakdown of the marriage.
Rylan said: “That's the only way I can describe it. It's like someone went like that, and I fell over, and I couldn't get back up. (It was) like I broke both my arms and legs.
“I thought I wasn't going to get out of it. I went back to live with my mum because I didn't want to be in my house, because there were too many memories of things in there.”
Rylan has spoken previously about the impact of the split, revealing he experienced suicidal thoughts and saw his weight drop dramatically after the relationship ended.
He later chronicled the period in his autobiography TEN: The Decade That Changed My Future.
Last year, during an episode of his podcast Rylan: How to Be in Love, he discussed the marriage with broadcaster and author Stephen Fry.
Reflecting on the separation, he said: “We got married in 2015.
“That same year, yeah. So it would have been my 10-year anniversary this year.”
Stephen asked whether Rylan felt pressure as one of Britain’s most visible LGBTQ+ television stars.
He said: “But did you feel also that - when it broke up and you were divorced – did you feel that there was in some sense you were letting down the idea of gay marriage, because we have a duty to show that our marriages are as robust and strong as any heterosexual?”
Rylan replied: “There was part of me that just felt like a complete and utter failure. I felt like I'd failed personally, but I felt like I'd found publicly on behalf of - the gays! You know, I'm not, I’m not ‘head gay’, it's not that.”
After Stephen responded: “No, you're not, exactly. You’re not a poster child for gayness”, Rylan continued: “But you do feel like, yeah, I’m going to get married, I want to get married, I can get married.”
He went on: “But when it doesn’t work out, you don’t want people to go, ‘you see that’s why they f****** shouldn’t get married’.”
Stephen replied: “You can get married again if you want…”, prompting Rylan to joke: “Yeah, with a pre-nup this time, I’m not going through that again.”
The interview comes months after Rylan appeared to confirm a new relationship with Kennedy Bates.
In January, the pair shared photographs from a holiday in the Maldives, where they stayed at the Adaaran Select Meedhupparu resort.
Posting images from the trip, Rylan wrote: “Maldives. You were perfect. New year, new friends, new beginnings”, while Kennedy replied: “A fantastic little holiday we had”.
Discussing the relationship on The Assembly, Rylan said: “When I first started dating Kennedy, and I told (my mum) about him, she was like, ‘He's handsome,’ and he is handsome.
“And then she was like, ‘So, has anything happened?’ And I'm like, ‘Shut up! Shut up!’”
