How Rick Astley's 'shameful' action led him to find love of his life - his wife Lene

Nineties star Rick Astley famously sang Never Gonna Give You Up but he then did give up on someone

He famously belted out Never Gonna Give You Up but Rick Astley admits he did in fact desert his long-term ­girlfriend just two years after that song became a worldwide hit.

The Denmark says he is ashamed of the disrespectful and weak way he left his ­childhood sweetheart of seven years by letter after falling for another woman, Lene Bausager. But despite the difficult way his relationship with Lene began, and the challenges they have faced along the way, Rick says after 35 years together, he made the right decision. “I fell in love with her the day I met her,” Rick says of his first encounter with Lene while he was on a promotional tour in Denmark, around the time of his hit 1987 song. But she had a partner and Rick was living in Cheshire with a woman he calls Debbie Smith in his new autobiography, Never. Fame was already having a ­negative impact on his relationship, and then he met Lene again in 1989. They ended up talking on the phone and writing letters for three months.

While they were both on holiday with friends, Lene told Rick she could not progress a relationship further while he still had a partner. “Of course, if you looked at it rationally, nothing was certain with Lene,” he writes. “But so what? It felt like I had a chance at the life I thought I wanted. "I had to grab at that surely, rather than stick with the life I knew wasn’t right. But that still left the question of what I was going to do, how I was going to tell Debbie.

“What if I waited for her to come home, tried to finish with her, and the same thing happened that always happened? What if she got home and I didn’t have the bottle to actually tell her? “So I did something I’ve felt ashamed about ever since. I wrote her a letter and left it in the house." “I can’t remember what it said – to be honest, writing it felt like having an out-of-body experience or ­something, as if it wasn’t really happening to me, or I couldn’t quite believe I was doing it."

“I never heard from Debbie again. I know she stayed on in the house for a little while, then threw a party when she left. I think she moved back in with her mum and dad." “It still bothers me that I ended it that way. It was weak and disrespectful, and I should have dealt with it better, but I was 22 years old. I’m sure it was hard for her, particularly because I was in the public eye.”

Rick, who says Debbie dealt with things “with integrity and maturity” then flew to Copenhagen without telling his record company. He says: “The next evening, there was a knock at my hotel door. It was Lene. She looked horrified when I told her what I’d done. She thought it was cowardly, sh*tty behaviour that didn’t say a lot for my ­character, or she seemed to be implying my potential as a boyfriend. She had a point, and I didn’t have much in the way of excuses. “Then she suggested that I move into her flat while I was there. It was March, 1989, 35 years ago. Lene and I have been together ever since.”

It hasn’t been all plain sailing for Rick and Lene, who have a daughter Emilie, who was born in 1992.

Rick reveals how he sank into depression after his pop career ended in 1993 and he and Lene spent time apart as he ­renovated a London home, while Lene and Emilie lived in a rented home nearby. “I spent so much time at the new house it was almost as if Lene and I had separated,” he says. But Rick and Lene sought couples therapy and he did counselling too.

He adds: “The therapy helped me switch the overthinking off and to see things in a different way... it really sorted me and Lene out. It didn’t fix anything exactly, but it gave me the tools to deal with stuff better.

“Gradually Lene and I managed to close the gap and get back onto something like an even keel.”

Despite the ups and downs, Rick has also found fame again, playing on stage with Blossoms and Dave Grohl and receiving a huge ­reception at ­Glastonbury last year. His wife Lene is now his manager, as well as being the love of his life, proving he was right to follow his heart in March 1989. As another lyric from that pop anthem goes: “A full commitment’s what I’m thinking of...”

* Never The Autobiography by Rick Astley out now, with Macmillan.

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