Page 35 of Going Solo (The Brent Boys #2)
“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.”
When Kennedy spectacularly revealed his homosexuality earlier this year, many media commentators and internet wagsters wondered whether Lyngstad might finally get his shot with Cole Kennedy. It turns out that while we were laughing at Lyngstad, the real joke was on us!
Almost six years after not winning Make Me a Pop Star