X-Factor’s diamond geezer

OLLY Murs feared the walls were crashing in.

The release of his new album, Right Place, Right Time, was imminent. He was presenting ITV’s The Xtra Factor, which beamed him into millions of homes. The stress was immense. Strung-out and depressed, he had a ‘lost week’ in late 2012. He hit the bottle. The harder he partied, the freer he felt. It was bleak.

“I had a sticky period,” he says. “Things were, maybe, getting on top of me a little. I had anxieties about the new record. And then there was The Xtra Factor. It’s hard to do both. There was a lot of strain.”