Dawn O’Porter ‘cried in cupboards’ away from her children after her friend Caroline Flack died
(Picture: Getty Images)Dawn O’Porter has opened up about the severe grief she experienced after losing her friend Caroline Flack to suicide in 2020.
O’Porter, 43, recalled how she “cried in cupboards” for months after Flack died, in an effort not have her two young sons see her so upset.
The presenter, who also lost her mum at age seven, spoke about how she dealt with the grief to Sophie Ellis-Bextor on her podcast Spinning Plates.
O’Porter said: “My [children] were so young at the time, only five and two, she died on the 15th of February, just before the pandemic got its claws into us all.
“I got Covid on the way back to LA from her funeral on the Friday, and then the world shut down on the Monday. It’s just this weird period of grief, not being able to leave the house and still being in floods of tears for six hours a day.
“With two kids at home, I cried in cupboards. I just didn’t want them to see.”
The mum-of-two continued: “They were going through enough, school had just been shut down…And I was like, ‘I’m not going to put my grief on top of them as well.’
“So, I dealt with it quite privately in a little bungalow that we were living in at the time.”
Flack took her own life aged 40 on February 15, 2020. O’Porter shared that she was told about her death an hour before the news hit Twitter, and broke down in another room away from her children, shared with husband Chris O’Dowd.
O’Porter has continued to post throwback photos of herself with Flack on social media, as she has celebrated her friendship with the late star.
The presenter also paid tribute to her friend over the summer as she helped out at the Flackstock festival, held in memory of Flack.
Speaking on the festival, O’Porter said: “It was absolutely incredible. We put on a festival for my good friend Caroline Flack because she loved festivals and she loved dancing, singing, it just felt like the right tribute.
“I honestly found the whole thing a bit too soon, very heart-breaking and terrifying. Like, how the hell are we going to put on a festival, it’s no joke.
“McDonald’s was our main sponsor, they gave us £300,000, I don’t know if I’m allowed to say that. It got the costs of running the festival sorted, and as soon as that was done, and the infrastructure was secure, I felt a lot better about it.”
O’Porter added: “The crowd was unbelievable; it was the most incredible energy.
“My thing at the start was we’re doing this with the hope of abolishing shame around people dying this way, we want people to feel they’ve got support and can talk about this, and as much as it was a memorial it was that too.
“I just feel like everything about it was perfect. There was so much crying, so emotional.”
Anyone seeking help can call Samaritans free (116 123) or Samaritans.org
