Tom Fletcher had to sleep with the TV on because he was terrified of aliens.
Tom Fletcher
The McFly frontman was left “paralysed with fear” after his dad told him a story about UFOs when he was a child and even when he was “fully grown”, he was convinced extra-terrestrials were spying on him.
He told the Daily Star Sunday newspaper: “One of the first things I remember is the aliens that have haunted me all my life. It was my dad who first introduced us. He used to tell me stories about them.
“One story in particular sticks in my mind - about travellers camping in a log cabin overnight, only realising an alien had been watching them for hours once its face had disappeared from the moonlit window.
“That story put an alien in my head that would never leave.
“Even fully grown and touring the world, I’d always go back to my hotel room and lie there terrified of the alien at the window.
“Even after playing in front of hundreds of thousands of fans, I’d sleep with the TV on, the sound down and the bathroom door open.”
In 2010, the 36-year-old singer – who has three sons with wife Giovanna Fletcher – sought help when struggling with his mental health and was thankful when the doctor vowed to help tackle his sleeping problems.
He said: “The doctor asked me if I had trouble sleeping, and I explained about the alien at the window.
“I told him about my night terrors and how, almost every night for as long as I could remember, I’d been rigid with fear. In a weird way, the more I spoke about these strange fears that had haunted me all my life, the more relieved I felt.
“The doctors I spoke to didn’t look at me as if I was crazy. They just started talking about what I could do to fix things.”
Tom was thankful when one of his doctors suggested he had bipolar disorder because it meant a lot about his life suddenly made sense.
He said: “My depression peaked at Christmas. My mood was as black as it had ever been. And while I knew I didn’t want to feel like this, there seemed to me no possibility of picking myself up.
“I went to see my doctor and tried my best to explain what was going on in my head. He had no hesitation in referring me to a doctor at the Priory.
“In the months that were to follow I’d be seen by two doctors. One of them gave me a diagnosis of bipolar, the other didn’t.
“Whatever the truth, all I know is that when the symptoms of bipolar disorder were read out to me, it was like a light going on in my head.
“The manic episodes, when everything seems possible. The depressions, when nothing seems worthwhile. That was my life.”
But the ‘All About You’ singer initially wasn’t ready to open up to his bandmates.
He added: “I didn’t talk to the guys about my diagnosis at first. Some things you just want to keep to yourself.”
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