Fern Britton has revealed that she once battled with depression and attempted suicide at the young age of 25.

After being banned from driving and suffering a painful breakup Fern decided that she just couldn’t go on:

“One afternoon I decided I couldn’t bear the pain any longer, and I sat down and opened a bottle of paracetamol,” she writes in v, serialised in the Daily Mail.

“All I wanted was to sleep, sleep, sleep. I tipped the bottle, poured myself a handful of pills and swigged them down with whisky. I didn’t take the whole bottle, as if I didn’t know whether or not it was what I wanted.”

Luckily an ex boyfriend called and alerted his sister, who lived near to her home in Cornwall. Fern said she was “lucky” to be alive.

Fern has previously revealed in her book that she was a victim of a horrific sexual attack at the age of 21.