Jay Blades couldn't "see tomorrow" as he felt like "a failure" and plotted to take his own life.
Jay Blades
The 'Repair Shop' star has opened up about hitting rock bottom six years ago and recalling cruel words from a teacher who told him his life "would always amount to nothing".
He told the Daily Mirror newspaper: "I was unable to see tomorrow, I couldn’t see myself existing in the future. It was everything, the breakdown of my marriage, my business, me not being able to speak about it to anyone.
"At that moment what was going through my head was everything I’d heard at secondary school, that I was nothing, a failure.
“My careers teacher when I was 14 told me it wasn’t worth trying because my life would always amount to nothing."
The 51-year-old presenter admitted he "couldn't even think straight" about the impact his suicide would have on his children.
However, he was saved by the motorway bridges he drove past that night having crash barriers.
He added: "If the barriers weren’t there you wouldn’t be speaking to me right now."
He then ran out of petrol and found himself in an almost deserted car park 100 miles from his home, where he stayed for around a week.
He explained: “I wasn’t eating or drinking. I lost a stone during that week. When you’re in that zone, normal thinking, like ‘go and have a wash’, ‘drink something’, ‘have breakfast’, all those are irrelevant.
"I didn’t even know what time it was, it was just a dead zone. Eventually I decided to go to McDonald’s. I got out the car and could feel a presence. It was my body odour. It was so strong it had its own postcode.
“I thought there was someone behind me but it was me. That’s when I decided I needed to go and get washed up.”
He found a hotel where the police - who had been contacted by his soon-to-be-ex-wife Jade - arrived with a psychiatric nurse after tracking him, and they let him leave with his friend Gerald Bailey.
Jay stayed with his pal's mother and stepfather, and he was able to make a recover.
In his new book 'Making It', he opened up on the moment he sat in his friend's car, and wrote: "I bawled and I howled. I was brought up not to cry, to always act tough.
"I had never cried in front of another man before. When I stopped, the numbness had passed. I was alive again.”