Popular Irish folk singer Tommy Fleming has come out as gay.
Fleming, 55, revealed the news in an interview with Irish podcast The Hard Shoulder after a week of speculation following his attempt to take his own life and Fleming’s break-up with his wife, Tina Mitchell, after 20 years together.
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“I’d been living a lie for all my life, really,” Fleming told host Ciara Kelly.
“And the hardest part of that was the energy and the effort it took for this lie to be constantly covered and to be, I suppose, protected,” he said.
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“And that lie was that I’m gay.”
Fleming’s revelation came after Mitchell confirmed last week that the couple had split up months earlier.
In a statement to the Sunday Independent, Tina Mitchell said, “I confirm that our marriage has ended, and we have been separated since October 2025.”
Fleming has spent 30 years on the Irish music charts after being discovered by Emerald Isle music legend Phil Coulter in 1993. Within weeks, the then-22-year-old was on tour with Coulter in appearances at the Cork Opera House, the National Concert Hall in Dublin, Boston Symphony Hall, and Carnegie Hall in New York.
He released his first album in 1996.
Fleming said in the Friday interview that as a young man, he didn’t want to be gay, and he lived a “straight life.”
“I’m finally living my truth,” he says now. “I’m finally being honest. I’m finally able to live a life that’s true and real and honest.”
His attempt to end his own life was not something he planned to reveal, he said.
Fleming confirmed that in September, he attempted to take his own life after experiencing “an overwhelming sense of absolute sadness and hopelessness.”
That fact remained private until audio of a phone conversation between Fleming and Mitchell was leaked last week, which included details of his stay at a mental health facility.
The call from St. Patrick’s Mental Health Services was recorded and shared without his knowledge, he said, adding that his privacy was taken away from him. It “was never meant to be public.”
He said he doesn’t remember the phone conversation taking place.
The Irish Garda this week launched a criminal investigation into the leaked audio clip.
Fleming said that since coming out, he’s lost his longtime addiction to alcohol and drugs.
“It was across a broad spectrum of prescription medication, illegal substances, alcohol, all of the above that I dabbled with…. [I] medicated with them,” Fleming explained.
Now, “the last thing” he wants is a drink: “It was like a switch. It’s like I’m not looking to numb something anymore,” he said.
Whether or how Fleming would have come out publicly absent the media coverage following the leaked audio and his wife’s acknowledgement that their marriage was over, Fleming didn’t say. He did allow, “This is not how I wanted to do this.”
But his “hand was forced,” the singer said.
Asked if he’d hurt his wife after concealing his sexuality for so many years, Fleming asked for acceptance.
“I’m absolutely remorseful and regretful for any of the hurt I’ve caused to the people I love, in pursuing my truth or living my truth, whatever way I want to put it,” he said.
“And someday I hope – I don’t seek forgiveness and I don’t expect it – but I would hope, if there is a God, I would hope and pray that there would be acceptance.”
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