Page 39 of Going Solo

Five and a half years after winningMake Me a Pop Star

“Marriage material” boy brawls outside Essex club

It took two grown women and a scantily clad go-go dancer to hold back Toby Lyngstad on Friday night, as the face of Britain’s favourite meme lashed out at photographers and reporters outside popular Brentwood nightspot Luxxe.

The Bulletinwas there to capture an apparently drunk Lyngstad stumbling out of the venue (pictured). A gaggle of reporters had gathered in the street, desperate to ask the question that has the whole internet talking—had Lyngstad always known Cole Kennedy was gay?

While Lyngstad brawled with the press, a member of his entourage, Cheryl Hitchen, told our photographer: “If you don’t f*** off, I’m going to ram that camera so far down your f**ing throat, every time you fart you’ll photograph your skid marks.”

How times have changed for the cheeky Essex lad who found fame with a declaration of love!

Five and a half years after not winningMake Me a Pop Star

“Marriage Material” Toby to enter “Celebrity Dorm Room”

Toby Lyngstad will enter the “Celebrity Dorm Room” house, Channel Three has announced.

Lyngstad has kept a low profile since his gaffe made him a national punchline, but Cole Kennedy coming out as gay two months ago has hauled him back into the spotlight.

The 22-year-old, who now goes by Tobias, had previously declined to comment on what he knew about Kennedy’s sexuality. Surely, this means he’s finally decided to spill all? What could have changed his mind, you ask? Sources close to the show say Lyngstad will get around £40,000 for the “Celebrity Dorm Room” appearance, whether he’s the first “celebrity” evicted by public vote or he lasts the show’s full four-week run.

Either way, it’s a big payday for the Colchester hairdresser.

More than five and a half years after not winningMake Me a Pop Star

“Cole artpopped my cherry!”

Marriage Material Toby’s shock confession!

TV’s most famous unrequited crush wasn’t so unrequited after all!

“Celebrity Dorm Room” contestant Tobias Lyngstad has spilt the tea about his torrid teenage love affair with the Go Tos’ Cole Kennedy. On last night’s post-watershed “Up Late” episode of the Channel Three show, where no topic is off limits, viewers were treated to the real story behind that infamous “marriage material” comment—and what happened next.

“He was my first love,” said Lyngstad, who has clearly hit the gym and got a stylist in the years since “Make Me a Pop Star.”

He was drinking homemade cocktails with fellow contestants Angela Guthrie, host of “The Renovation Repairers”; former test cricketer Hedley Rudloc; ex-Tory MP Honoria Reith and social media influencer Amber Light. The celebs were talking about losing their virginities.

“We did it on top of my ARTPOP bedspread while Mum was at the salon and Dad was out playing golf,” Lyngstad said of his first sexual encounter with the future boy band icon. “It was awkward, fumbling, terrifying and incredibly sweet. That said, we soon got the hang of it. By the time he dumped me, he could play me like a guitar.”

Lyngstad stopped short of sharing salacious details, despite being pressed by self-confessed Kenneddicts Light and Guthrie. It quickly became clear the teenage affair was more than puppy love.

Lyngstad said: “We just connected, you know? He would look at me like I was beautiful and, let’s be honest, I weren’t. He would listen to me like what I said mattered, like he was interested in what I had to say. Literally, no one had ever done that before. People think I’m thick because of how I speak and how I look, but I ain’t. Cole saw that. And he was an open book, you know? Genuine, kind, loving, funny. What you saw was what you got. Who wouldn’t fall in love with that?

“At the time, I would have done anything for him. Killed for him. Marched to the gates of hell for him. Got a spiral perm for him. I was 16 so I thought it was forever. It took me a long time to get over him.”

Lyngstad revealed the break-up left him “depressed, non-functioning, and empty.” He blamed the show’s producers for orchestrating the split.

“A part of me will never forgive him being too weak to fight for us,” he said.

Lyngstad said he had not spoken to Kennedy since their private text messages were published in this newspaper in the weeks after the Go Tos won “Make Me a Pop Star.”

“I realise now our phones were probably hacked, but I spent a good year blaming friends and family for leaking the messages,” he said. “That sort of thing can ruin relationships. I’m lucky my family are amazing.”

The Bulletin strenuously denies that it has ever used phone hacking techniques.

Lyngstad revealed he decided to go on the show to talk about his relationship with Kennedy because he’d “spent six years being a joke, unable to fight back.”

“Now Cole has come out, I can speak my truth without betraying either my word or my values,” he said. “I’m here to reclaim my narrative. I’m here for my mental health. After this show, I never want to talk about Cole Kennedy ever again.”

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