Olly Murs has admitted he’s “still coming to terms” with the death of Caroline Flack.
Caroline was found dead at her home in London on February 15, 2020 at the age of 40, after taking her own life.
Last month, a group of her close friends climbed some of the highest peaks in the Lake District to raise money for leading suicide prevention charity Samaritans in Caroline’s honour.
The group raised £30k for the charity, with Olly opening up about the “emotional” day on the Joe Wicks podcast.
The singer said: “It was amazing. It was tough, physically and mentally, to go up and climb the Lake District – try and do 24 peaks in 24 hours. We managed to do 18. We couldn’t do 24.”
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“We didn’t anticipate the group was going to be from different levels of fitness, and also mentally and physically all of us are different. I thought I was really tough.”
“We smashed the walks and I got to the end and I thought ‘oh, I’ve dealt with this quite well emotionally’, I thought I’d be quite emotional,” he admitted.
“There was times when we spoke about Caroline. There was times when we reminisced on stories because all of us knew her differently, and then we went out for dinner that night.”
Olly recalled the moment he broke down in tears in front of the group over the loss of his close friend.
He said: “And, this completely threw me off guard, one of the girls got up and started talking and was saying thank you so much to everyone.”
“And all of a sudden it all went round the table and everyone had to say something. And I was so caught off guard, and they asked me to say something and I just couldn’t speak.”
“I just broke down and cried the whole time in front of all these strangers that I don’t really know. And I was just like ‘what’s going on’.”
“Grief is so tough and even now it’s really difficult to even think that we did a climb for someone that in my eyes is still here.”
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“It doesn’t make sense that she’s not here. It doesn’t compute yet,” Olly confessed. “I’m still coming to terms with the idea that she’s not here. That’s really weird.”
“When we were on the climb we were just sat chatting – me and Lou (Teasdale), who is one of her closest friends – and we were both like ‘this is so weird, what are we doing, we are walking for Caroline, this doesn’t make sense, she should be here, and we shouldn’t be doing this’.”
“But we were, and it was a beautiful thing, and her mum messaged me and was so proud of us. It was really, really tough but we did it and we did a great thing for her family. We raised £30,000 for the Samaritans.”
“I do question all the time ‘could I have done more?'” he added, becoming emotional.
If you have been affected by anything in this article, please visit www.pieta.ie or call 1800 247 247.
