Gareth Gates has hit out at Katie Price for breaking the trust of a relationship and spilling the beans on their fling together – saying it damaged his ability to trust people he knew.
Former glamour model Price sold a story claiming she’d taken the Pop Idol runner-up singer’s virginity when he was 17 and she was heavily pregnant with her first child with a previous partner.
Gates denied the relationship but later conceded it was true, although he has now hinted the detail may not be entirely correct while still describing Price as a “lovely girl”.
Asked if Price did take his virginity, he said: ‘No comment. I’ll just say I was extremely inexperienced with a girl who was extremely experienced. I could see why she thought that.
‘I haven’t ever spoken about relationships. I believe that relationships are between two people and I couldn’t believe that somebody else was selling stories about very, very intimate details.
‘And I was shocked and I learned a lot about that – about people and about the industry, and about trust I guess.
Gareth Gates has hit out at Katie Price for breaking the trust of a relationship and spilling the beans on their fling together – saying it damaged his ability to trust people he knew
‘I would never have ever done that to her or to anybody else, and so it was a real learning curve for me.’
Appearing on the Great Company with Jamie Laing podcast, he added: ‘I felt exactly the same at the time.
‘And it was a shame because she’s a really lovely girl. But I couldn’t quite believe somebody would do that I guess.
‘I became sort of very wary of trusting people after that because that was such a big thing on such a massive, massive scale – it was everywhere.
‘It became the main thing in every interview. Everybody just wanted to know about that and not about my brand new album which I’d worked tirelessly on.
‘I was like, “That’s a shame I’m now having to talk about this when actually I just want to be an artist”. That was tough. It just kind of made me extremely wary of people in the industry I guess.
‘You become very careful about what you text people, what you say to people. I was a boy at the time, I wasn’t even an adult.’
After his brief liaison with Price, Gates met then dancer Suzanne Mole in 2002 and they married in 2008, going on to have a daughter the following year.
After becoming a huge solo artist Gates, 41, went into musical theatre.
He met Faye Brookes in 2012 when they starred together in Legally Blonde: The Musical shortly before he split from his wife.
He and Brookes began a relationship but that ended in 2019. He is now in a relationship with stage actress Allana Taylor.
Price was six months pregnant with her eldest son, Harvey, now 23, while Gates was a virgin when they had their fling (Price is pictured while pregnant with Harvey in March 2002)
Gates found fame after reaching the final of Simon Cowell’s hit talent show Pop Idol in 2001
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Gareth Gates recalls the furore over losing his virginity to pregnant Katie Price aged 17
Writing in her 2004 autobiography Being Jordan, Price revealed that most of her hookups with Gates took place on a sofa at a friend’s house, in a bid to keep their fling out of the spotlight.
She also claimed that they booked a hotel together to attend the BRIT Awards in London.
During their fling, the couple both denied being romantically involved.
However, she was left blindsided when the singer broke up with her via text, leaving her feeling ‘gutted’.
She said: ‘I really didn’t need any more rejections in my life. I was with him at an important time in his life, and then suddenly he dumped me.
‘He always said that once he got his record deal, then we might be able to be open about our relationship… But when the deal came through, our relationship was over.’
