He first stepped into the spotlight as a jack-the-lad cricketer, now the star is opening up about his long battle with bulimia
By Guy Kelly
There are, by his own admission, two versions of Freddie Flintoff. The first is Fred, the man who has lived in the public eye for the better part of two decades, initially as the England cricket team’s biggest character –and most prodigious talent – in the 2000s, then as a host of Top Gear and a team captain on Sky’s A League of Their Own. Fred was, and is, a ‘jack the lad’: a social animal who parties as hard as he bowled, who’s quick with a joke and seemingly fearless.
Then there’s Andrew, Flintoff’s real first name, who is a man the public haven’t ever really met. Quiet and endlessly self-doubting, this Flintoff has lived with a secret for most of his life: since he was a teenager, he has been suffering from bulimia.
‘Fred is that person who goes out on a cricket field or drives cars,’ he says in a new BBC documentary, Freddie Flintoff: Livin...
Want to see the rest of this article?
Would you like to see the rest of this article and all the other benefits that Issues Online can provide with?
- Useful related articles
- Video and multimedia references
- Statistical information and reference material
- Glossary of terms
- Key Facts and figures
- Related assignments
- Resource material and websites