Gail Porter says that late Prodigy frontman Keith Flint was ‘the love of her life’

Television presenter said the pair, who dated from 1999 until 2001, were linked by their respective ‘issues’

Gail Porter has called the late Prodigy frontman Keith Flint the “love of [her] life”.

The television presenter and singer were a couple from 1999 to 2001, after being set up on a blind date.

Flint, who died by suicide in 2019, struggled with mental health throughout his life, and Porter told Louis Theroux’s BBC Sounds Grounded podcast that the pair were linked by their respective “issues”. Porter was diagnosed with bipolar in the early 2000s.

“The good thing was, he didn’t really talk about work, I didn’t really talk about work, we would just go and do fun things,” she remembered.

She said that they flew to the Maldives together while Porter was presenting the travel programme Wish You Were Here, and that the holiday served as a respite from Flint’s “issues” at the time.

“Mental health or substance?” Theroux asked. “A bit of everything,” replied Porter.

She continued: “So by the time we got to the Maldives, he’d had a few wobbles but by the end of it, he was swimming every day, we were going to the gym and both of us, our mental health was just so fantastic. Of course, everyone is going to be extremely happy if you’re in the Maldives, we were so lucky and then when we got back I said, ‘Right, I’m going to go back to work and you go back to work’.

“He just didn’t get his mind back into things properly. And he was going that way and I was going, ‘Right, we need to keep positive’, and it just didn’t work that way. He was on a downer, I was trying to work my hardest … It was a shame.

“I think it was the first time I actually felt like, ‘Please don’t leave me’ kind of love,” Porter explained. “I’m not a great person to hang out, I get very bored very quickly, but because Keith had his issues like I had my issues, it seemed to just work. But I always thought there was gonna be that moment where we’d have bad times at different times, and it kind of worked that way, unfortunately.”

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