Singer Sinitta has made a candid confession about her past marriage to Andy Willner, revealing it was partly motivated by lingering feelings for Simon Cowell.
Appearing on the Suddenly Single podcast, the 62-year-old reflected on her decades-long on-off connection with Cowell, whom she first met as a teenager at a London nightclub in the early 1980s.
Looking back on the relationship, she admitted she had hoped it would eventually become something more serious.
“I was trying to make that relationship ‘it’,” Sinitta said.
She continued, “His narrative was just be patient, and you’ll have everything you want.
“I assumed everything I wanted meant a normal family life with him. And then he met the love of his life and had a child. Silly me.”
Sinitta and Cowell were romantically linked for more than two decades before settling into a friendship, with the singer later appearing regularly on his TV shows, including Britain's Got Talent.
She went on to reveal that when she married Willner in 2002, part of her motivation was emotional retaliation.
“The man that I married was actually a lovely person. It was a bit of a revenge move at the time, but it developed into something,” she said.
“But even during that relationship, it was obvious that there was unfinished business (with Simon.)”
The couple adopted two children, Magdalena and Zac, before their marriage ended seven years later.
Reflecting on that period of her life, Sinitta said she often found herself in what she described as “retaliation relationships.”
“It would be, ‘Well, if he’s done that, then I’ll date Brad Pitt, I’ll date this model’.
“But always intentionally thinking we will be together when we stop being crazy.
“Because I would have been ready to go at any time, but it was like my pride needed me to go and have a retaliation relationship to show I’m not desperate.”
Despite their complicated history, Sinitta remains close to Cowell’s fiancée Lauren Silverman, who shares a son, Eric, with the TV personality.
“So I did a lot of, I think, self-harm by trying to squash all my feelings,” she added.