Jon Lee, best known as a member of S Club 7, delivered one of the rawest moments of this season’s Celebs Go Dating when he opened up about the grief that followed his father’s illness and death — and the subsequent years when his family thought they might never see him again. According to coverage of the episode and the broadcaster’s announcements, Lee told the dating agents on screen that he cut off contact with his mother and vanished for an extended period after his father’s decline, leaving her fearful that he might be dead. Channel 4’s press materials confirm Lee is among the celebrities taking part in the new series.
On the programme Lee described how his father’s diagnosis of motor neurone disease precipitated a rapid and devastating deterioration: within a year his father had lost mobility, speech and the ability to eat without a feeding tube. ‘To go out like that, I literally lost the plot. I thought, “What the f**k is the point?”,’ Lee said to the agents on the show, describing the moment grief overwhelmed him. Several outlets reporting the episode picked up those scenes as a particularly emotional highlight.
The way Lee coped after his father’s death was candid and unvarnished. He told viewers he turned to heavy drug use, ‘went completely off the rails’, then packed his life into a bag, sent his mother his front-door key and a note, and left the country for several years. For two of those years he says he cut all contact; his mother later told interviewers she feared every phone call might be the police with news that her son had been found dead. Those details have been carried across multiple reports covering the broadcast.
Those revelations sit alongside a longer history of addiction and recovery that Lee has previously discussed publicly. Press profiles and recent previews of his appearance have revisited his past crystal‑meth use, episodes of drug‑induced psychosis and a period when he was sectioned, and they trace the arc from that turmoil to the quieter life he sought afterwards — including time away from the UK, work caring for rescue dogs and a gradual return to public life. Journalists who have followed his story describe his appearance on the series as part of that ongoing recovery narrative.
Lee’s account also revisited the question of sexuality and identity that shadowed his early career. He came out to family and friends long before he made any public statement; in a 2010 interview he told Gay Times he ‘always knew’ he was gay but did not want to make a spectacle of announcing it. While his bandmates and relatives were aware, Lee says that life as a teenager in a manufactured pop outfit left him little space to explore relationships properly, and that his romantic life did not really begin in earnest until after S Club disbanded.
Another striking admission on the show was that Lee had been effectively celibate for six years. He told the agency he had not dated in that time, a fact that underpinned his decision to sign up for the series and to subject himself to the agents’ scrutiny. Dr Tara, one of the programme’s agents, later told reporters she had been surprised by how open Lee was in the agency — saying he had a ‘shocking revelation’ and was ‘ready to bare it all emotionally’. Channel 4’s publicity around the series frames these confessions as part of the show’s blend of entertainment and emotional coaching.
Channel 4’s press release announcing the Celebs Go Dating line‑up made clear the series aims to pair celebrity clients with ordinary applicants while the agents attempt to guide them through dating; it lists Lee among a varied cast and sets out production and broadcast intentions. In reporting Lee’s scenes, broadcasters and tabloids have followed that framing, presenting his participation as both a televisual moment and a personal step back into the public eye.
Source: Noah Wire Services
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