Former Eurovision star considered taking his own life after song contest

Irish Daily Mirror

5 hours ago

Former Eurovision star Joe McCaul has revealed he considered taking his own life after the song contest.
Joe was part of brother and sister duo, Donna and Joe McCaul, who represented Ireland at the Eurovision in 2005 in Ukraine with their song Love while Joe was still just 17.
After failing to qualify, Joe revealed he faced months of ridicule and only got a holiday to Crete out of it.
Speaking to Brenda Dennehy on The Comeback podcast, he said: 'I remember when we didn't get in, the devastating effect that had on me.
"I went back to my room, I was only 17, and I struggled very hard because that was more shame, more embarrassment, more rejection. Everyone was going out, and they (Donna and the crew) went to the finals on Saturday night, I didn't go, I just stayed in my hotel room.'
He said when he returned to Ireland, he was ridiculed regularly.
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'I think over the years, I was nearly taken advantage of. I was made an eejit out of by people, people in the media. That was hard because I was saying, 'Where is my self-worth, why can't I be assertive?'
'I found it very hard to be assertive because I didn't like conflict, and then because I didn't like conflict, if I reacted a certain way, some people would say 'Oh that was very aggressive'. So I couldn't even stand up for myself.'
Joe said he thought they'd be 'millionaires' but all he got after Eurovision was 'a holiday in Crete'.
'I thought we were going to be millionaires. I thought I was going to be able to buy my mother out of the council estate. I got a holiday to Crete, that's what I got.'
Joe is the youngest of six siblings and his mother raised them on her own.
'My dad, unfortunately, passed away a couple of years ago, but I had no kind of relationship with him. Alcoholism, unfortunately, took over his life and then he moved to London.'
Joe said when a media outlet discovered his father's issue with drink it caused massive stress on the family.
'Once or twice I thought of taking my own life.'
He said he had suffered recurrent intrusive thoughts about suicide from an early age.
'The intensity of it then would probably get a little more if I was under any increased stress or anything significant was happening in my life or something bad was happening… I was always terrified of the thought… I would always be going, 'f**k, I need to see a psychiatrist'.'
After a stint on X Factor in 2015, where Simon Cowell called him an 'awful performer', Joe suffered at the hands of social media trolls again.
'And then there was the shame, the embarrassment, the rejection, and I just wanted it to be over there.
'The s**t that was put online, I remember my friends used to be sending them to me and the horrible stuff that people were saying. I used to have to say 'please do not send me this, I don't want to be looking at it'.'
Joe revealed in 2014 that he had been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis at the end of 2013.
'I literally just lost the plot then. I think I went on a self-destruct button that was hit. I went off the rails for months.'
He said he was on medication that didn't suit him at the time but has since changed medication and is currently symptom free and in remission.
'Fitness, running, doing kind of high-intensity interval based kind of training has been my saviour. Not just for my physical health because that's quite good but for my mental health, which is an ongoing struggle that some days I'm really, really shit.
'But I have really good coping tools and I have a really solid support group around me,' he added.