Caroline Flack: Her Life and Death documentary leaves viewers in tears

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A Channel 4 documentary looking into the life and tragic death of much-loved presenter Caroline Flack left viewers in tears as it aired on Wednesday night.

Caroline Flack: Her Life and Death saw friends and family of the star pay tribute to her, while documenting the rise of her career and her tragic passing one year on.

Viewers took to Twitter in their droves as they watched the ‘heartbreaking’ scenes and praised her family for bravely shedding light on Caroline’s mental health. 

The emotional documentary saw the late Love Island host’s mother and twin sister discuss her ‘fascination’ with suicide and mental health battles, with her relatives admitting they begged her to quit showbiz to give herself a chance of ‘an easy life’.

The harrowing one-part show also featured appearances from some of Caroline’s closest friends, including her former X Factor co-presenter Olly Murs, 36, who broke down in tears and said her untimely passing is ‘going to hurt for a long time’. 

Caroline was tragically found dead on February 15, aged 40, the day after hearing the Crown Prosecution Service would go ahead with a trial for allegedly attacking her model and former tennis player boyfriend Lewis Burton in December 2019. 

BAFTA winner Charlie Russell directed the documentary and commissioner Becky Cadman said she hoped the programme would be a ‘fitting tribute to Caroline.’  

She said: ‘This film is about and for Caroline. A sister, daughter, friend and one of the most successful TV presenters in the country.’

They added: ‘A rollercoaster life told through the memories of the people who knew her best, Caroline’s family and friends, we hope this will be a fitting tribute to her.’

And viewers flooded Twitter as they watched the late TV presenter’s mum Christine, 70, and twin sister Jody, 41, talk about Caroline. 

One viewer wrote: ‘Watching the programme and it’s heartbreaking such a beautiful person inside and out was a shame that she thought this was the only way out! Hope this helps people understand what she was going through.’

Another added: ‘How brave are Caroline’s mum and sister talking about the many suicides attempts of Caroline even before she was famous, such a hard thing to have dealt with in all their lives, so desperately said.’ 

‘The documentary about Caroline Flack is truly heartbreaking. I can’t believe I’m sat here watching this and only just coming to terms that she’s really no longer here. Rest in peace you beautiful lady, you’re still so loved,’ typed another. 

‘Oh my god this Caroline Flack programme is heartbreaking,’ a third viewer chimed. 

A different Twitter user typed: ‘Caroline Flack was a real life angel.’

‘I am sat here in tears listening to Caroline’s story and listening to her family talking about her,’ said another. 

During the Channel 4 documentary, Caroline’s mum Christine and her sister Jody spoke about how the presenter was always ‘fascinated’ by suicide and previously tried to kill herself following a relationship breakup before she found fame.

And in a bid to encourage her fans to open up about mental health, they revealed Caroline attempted to hide her own problems – she had battled depression since becoming a teenager – because she was ‘frightened’ of the public’s reaction and how it might impact her career. 

Christine said: ‘She had a long relationship when she was in Cambridge but that ended and then we got a call, she’d taken some pills, she spent time in hospital and then you could tell it wasn’t right, her reaction wasn’t right. Yeah, she didn’t handle heartbreak well.

‘We went through all the doctors and they saw to her and thought no it’s just a one off but there was always that fear after then that… I don’t know, you always worried in case anything happened.’ 

Jody added: ‘It feels so weird talking about it because I know it’s something she never wanted anybody to know about. 

‘Each serious boyfriend, she sort of took a lot of tablets, drank a lot, and ended up in an A&E situation a lot of times. She really didn’t think she could cope with that feeling so it was her trying to control it.’ 

Meanwhile, Olly Murs, 36, said his ‘heart breaks’ every time he thinks of Caroline, and he struggles to imagine the internal suffering she endured in the moments that led up to her suicide.

During the documentary, the singer sobbed as he remembered the good times he shared with his close friend and former co-presenter. 

Olly said: ‘I just know that my heart breaks every time I think of Caz and think of what she would’ve had to have gone through to take her own life and that’s going to hurt for a long time because we got on so well – we were great together.’   

TV presenter Natalie Pinkham, 43, added: ‘All that talent, all that love, all the joy she brought, just gone.  

‘She has gone, it’s just horrible and you feel like saying “come on you’ve made your point now, come back, we’ve all listened, we’ve heard and I’m sorry.”‘

Later in the documentary, Olly spoke about the public’s negative reaction to him and Caroline presenting The X Factor in 2015 – and how they first knew they were losing their jobs when it became a news story. 

Olly said: ‘I remember the final of The X Factor there was a big story and basically we were getting sacked after the show.

‘It was an awful experience knowing that everyone hated us on the show. That X Factor experience for both of us was hard. But again Caroline, God, she got it so much more than me. I don’t know what it was.’

Elsewhere in the documentary, Dermot O’Leary’s wife Dee, 42, who’s a TV producer and was close friends with Caroline, said the former Love Island presenter became entrapped in a game of ‘cat and mouse’ with social media as she became more famous.   

Dee said: ‘Her rise to fame coincided with the rise of social media and I think she was in a kind of weird cat and mouse game with social media, with press, with fame.’ 

Appearing alongside his wife, Dermot, 47, added: ‘She hated it but she couldn’t live without it.’  

The film showed some examples of the hateful tweets posted about Caroline, including one that said: ‘There is nobody on earth I hate more than Caroline Flack.’

Olly said: ‘The abuse that she was getting, it was awful, awful. Those comments did affect her, those comments did hurt.’ 

Polly Hill, who was Caroline’s agent between 2003 and 2015, explained: ‘We did try quite hard to try and wean her off social media but actually I don’t think we ever really got a handle on that, unfortunately.

‘It was slightly destroying her, I would say. She was suffering basically and then when you did see her face to face, nothing would get mentioned it would be a “yeah I’m fine” whereas obviously she wasn’t fine… yeah.’  

Caroline’s mum, said: ‘I used to say to her “well just don’t read it, get rid of your phone” but she’d be on it constantly, you’d try and talk to her but she’d be looking at her phone.’  

And This Morning presenter Dermot hinted at the importance of speaking out about mental health issues, as him and wife Dee said Caroline ‘hid’ her problems ‘so well’ but they never went away. 

Dermot said: ‘It’s very difficult to know the extent of someone’s problems if they tell you – if they sweep them under the carpet.’

Dee added: ‘She just hid it too well, that’s the thing she just hid it so well and for me the only warning signs were the addiction to social media and you definitely saw that over the years progressing and obviously that then grew and grew and didn’t really stop and go away.’  

In the Channel 4 film, Caroline’s mum Christine shared her regret over not spending more time with her daughter when she had the chance.  

She looked back at old Mother’s Day cards from Caroline and her Showbiz memorabilia, including the Strictly Glitter Ball trophy she won in 2014.

Christine said: ‘She used to say to me “oh I’ve booked this mum, are you coming? Come with me.”

‘Or “we’ll go here and go there” and I’d say “I’ve got to work” and I did have to work and do you know Charlie… you shouldn’t, all the times you sort of miss with someone and you should just do it shouldn’t you?’  

Her family hope the film will give Caroline’s fans the confidence to talk about their problems and break down the stigma still attached to depression.

They believe if the former X Factor host had opened up about her illness, she may still be here today.

Christine explained: ‘She hated the thought of people thinking she was this awful person.

‘Even when she’d taken pills as a young person, she didn’t want anyone to know, she didn’t want anyone to know she got down and I know they say everyone’s talking about it now but I think a lot of people that really suffer with depression still don’t talk about it, they don’t. I think people are still frightened to say it.’  

Jody also recalled how she pleaded with her sister to step off the celebrity treadmill in a bid to give herself some chance of ‘an easy life’. 

Her sister Jody said: ‘I would beg her to change jobs and leave showbiz but she never would, life would have been easier but she wasn’t built for an easy life. She was always scared she’d be ridiculed, she was terrified to admit her mental health struggles.’

Caroline’s mother said ‘she found heartbreak impossible’ and told how she once became distraught over a failed romance with a fairground worker known to the family as ‘Waltzer boy’, explaining: ‘She ran away from home as a teenager after falling for a man who worked at a fair, it broke her heart.’

Christine also told how her daughter ‘regularly changed doctors so nobody would know the full extent of her problems’.

She criticised Lorraine Kelly and Graham Norton for ridiculing her daughter for losing jobs. Lorraine remarked ‘that’s showbusiness’ on her ITV morning show when Caroline had to leave Love Island, while Norton joked about her being dropped as a presenter on The X Factor.

‘The documentary made this year bearable – it was therapy for us,’ said her mother, who also begged Instagram and Twitter to tackle the scourge of trolling online abuse. ‘I don’t think they protect anyone – you can’t get away from it, it follows you on your phone.

‘They are making money from it and need to step up.’

Jody also told of Caroline’s romances, saying: ‘There was a boy’.

The one being referenced was a traveller boy who captured the TV presenter’s heart when she was a teenager.

‘That was, I guess, the first time she got super, super, super upset,’ reveals Jody.

‘He was a bit older and it was dramatic and secret and so exciting. When it didn’t work out, she was heartbroken. She ran away. We didn’t know where she was.

‘And she’d gone to this house, was banging on his door. And she really, really, really, really struggled emotionally. She was very, very depressed. And then that pattern carried on for ever’.

If you have been affected by this story, you can call the Samaritans on 116 123 or visit www.samaritans.org.