Michelle Heaton ‘signs to Celebrity SAS after three-year drink and drugs battle’

Michelle Heaton has reportedly signed up to ‘Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins’ after her three-year battle with drink and drugs.

The former Liberty X singer, 43, is said to be joining the Channel 4 show’s next series alongside former Conservative minister Matt Hancock, TOWIE’s James Argent and The Wanted’s Siva Kaneswaran.

A source told The Sun on Sunday night (25.09.22): “Michelle is ready and raring to go and is out filming with her co-stars now.

“She has gone through so much in her personal life because of her struggle with Mum-of-two Michelle previously told The Sun she “wasn’t in a fit state” to appear on TV shows she was being proposed for due to her addiction battles.

She admitted: “In hindsight it was probably for the best thing that could have happened for me. I would never have been able to do them properly when I was drinking.

“I am in a really healthy place right now both mentally and physically and I am the happiest and healthiest I’ve ever been.”

Michelle confessed at the end of 2021 she had never performed a Liberty X gig sober.

The recovering alcoholic, who spent 12 years in the band, also sobbed during an interview with ITV host Lorraine Kelly she had been secretly drunk during appearances on her morning show.

Michelle, who has daughter Faith, 10, and son AJ, eight, with her teetotal Irish businessman husband Hugh Hanley, added she was only getting smell, taste and emotions back after her years of numbing herself with drink and cocaine binges.

She told Lorraine: “It’s so good being on stage sober – if I’d known this I would have stopped drinking years ago.

“It’s so much better and invigorating being on stage and not worrying about, ‘When are you going to fall over?’ I’d never done a gig sober before.”

She said her body battled “to relearn” to survive with her damaged pancreas and liver after her life-saving stint in The Priory, where she was checked in fearing she was “on death’s door”.

Michelle added to Lorraine: “I promised myself I wouldn’t cry... I wanted to apologise to you before we begin because there were times where I drank before I sat on this sofa and you trusted me and I did campaigns for you.

“I love you so much because you’ve always been there to support me and I want to say I’m sorry.”

Michelle admitted her husband Hugh staged an intervention in 2020 about her drinking but she refused to go to rehab.

She finally submitted to the treatment in 2021 after becoming so hooked on alcohol she felt she “couldn’t breathe” or move without alcohol.

Michelle was told by Priory staff her enzyme GGT, which indicates liver damage, was 2,5000 compared to a healthy 30.

She said she has “always” had addictions including one to slimming pills in her youth that left her with heart problems.

Michelle slipped into drinking and drug taking after struggling with the side effects of a hysterectomy in 2012 and a double mastectomy in 2015, carried out to reduce her risk of cancer, which plunged her into an early menopause.