Michelle Heaton wanted her husband to leave her amid her battle with alcoholism

She told Closer magazine: "I wanted Hugh to leave me because I knew I was killing him, and he wanted to leave me but he couldn't. He made himself quite ill because he had nowhere to go.

"He would often retreat and go silent as he didn't know the full extent of what was going on. He was experiencing a lot of different emotions and feared he was losing his wife."

After years of battling the booze as a result of various health scares - which included a double mastectomy in 2013 and hysterectomy in 2015 - Michelle hit the bottle hard in lockdown.

The pop star - who has Faith, nine, and Aaron, seven - admitted that her life was spiralling out of control amid the pandemic.

She said: "I wasn't with it at all - I had no concept of what was going on around me. I was functioning, but I wasn't functioning properly. It was lockdown and the kids were home so I didn't need to drive. I was drinking solidly four out of seven days a week."

Michelle shocked her Instagram followers when she shared a before and after-style photograph on the platform, which showed her 20-week journey to sobriety.

The singer acknowledges that she was self-destructing during her battle with alcohol, and she was keen for her followers to see "how far" she'd come in her recovery.

She said: "I was in a state of self-destruction. Posting that picture wasn't meant as a shock tactic - I wanted to show how far I've come."