Seann Walsh details mental health impact of Strictly kissing drama
The stand-up said he had lost his self-belief since pictures were published of him and his married dance partner.
Comedian Seann Walsh says he is suffering panic attacks following the backlash over his kiss with his Strictly Come Dancing partner.
The former contestant on the BBC One show, 35, made headlines in 2018 when he was pictured kissing his married dance partner, Katya Jones, while he was himself in a relationship.
Jones has since split with her husband Neil but said she has no regrets and insisted they were as close as ever despite going their separate ways.
Speaking on the Take Flight podcast, Walsh described the impact the episode has had on his mental health.
The stand-up, who previously suffered panic attacks as a young man, said: “The panic attacks came back. Big, big panic attacks and I ended up having what I later found out were vertigo seizures.
“I had one the other day, I just lied down. I had to lie down in the street, it’s quite humiliating. It’s London so nobody gives a shit.
“I have to relive what happened, still. I can be OK and then suddenly the memories of it all come back, that I can’t stop thinking about it.
“It defeats me and beats me until the place starts spinning and I lose balance and fall and then I start screaming.
“So I still get them. They’re less frequent. I’d never had them before.
“Obviously I’m on some sort of anti-anxiety, anti-depression, it’s called Sertraline, to try and help with that. For me the big one is exercise is what helps me. It really, really helps me deal with that.”
Walsh said his passion for comedy had waned in the wake of the controversy.
“I wanted to be a comedian pretty much my whole life,” he said.
“As everyone does when they get involved with anything in life. You want to leave your mark. You don’t want to leave a mark the way I left a mark.
“But you have got to have some sort of self-belief that you can do something special and make as many people laugh as possible.
“And that had gone really. That had gone with the kiss and the statement really.”
Walsh had been in a relationship with actress Rebecca Humphries at the time of the kiss.
Humphries broke up with him after the pictures were published and, in a public statement, accused Walsh of calling her “psycho/nuts/mental” when she suspected he was involved with the Strictly dancer.
