IRISH SINGER TOMMY Fleming has said he has been “living a lie” as he revealed in an interview for the first time that he is gay. 

The Sligo-born folk singer told Newstalk’s The Hard Shoulder that he was “remorseful and regretful” for any hurt caused to his family, but it was time to “set the record straight”.

His interview came after a voice note recording involving Fleming emerged on social media earlier this week.

Fleming rose to fame in the early 1990s after he was asked to tour the US with Phil Coulter. He has since released 16 albums, including Voice of Hope, and has toured extensively throughout Ireland, as well as the UK, US and Europe. 

He and his wife Tina separated in October 2025, following 20 years of marriage. 

The 55-year-old told Newstalk that he and his wife were happy for at least 10 years, but “small cracks” started to appear and eventually “those cracks became a chasm”.

“I wasn’t happy, and it wasn’t about being happy, it was about being uncomfortable with the situation, if that makes sense,” he said. 

“I’d been living a lie for all my life really, 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, and that lie was that I’m gay.”

I’m gay, and I’m finally living my truth, I’m finally being honest, being able to live a life that’s true and real and just honest.

Fleming said he knew he was gay when he was a young man, but that he told himself he wasn’t.

'I was living a lie.'

Tommy Fleming has spoken out about the breakdown of his marriage, revealing publicly for the first time that he is gay. He spoke with Ciara Kelly, on The Hard Shoulder. pic.twitter.com/XL6DOHu1Gw

— NewstalkFM (@NewstalkFM) May 15, 2026

“Lying to yourself at 22 is an easy thing to do, but as the years go by, you just find it an awful lot harder. It wasn’t that you were trying to say you weren’t gay. You lived a straight life and you had girlfriends, but you told yourself you weren’t and that was it, and you didn’t act on it.”

He said he didn’t want to be gay. “Not in 1991. It was a very different country.”

Homosexuality was a crime in Ireland until 1993.

Fleming said the fact that his wife was also his manager “made life more difficult”.

“You lived together, you worked together, you socialised together, we were always in each other’s pocket, and just like thousands of marriages every day, we just started to drift apart,” he said.

Asked if he felt trapped, he said: “100%, but trapped within my own creation, within my own body of lies, within my own bubble that I’ve created, and that was what was a huge part of it.”

Fleming said he was “absolutely remorseful and regretful” for the public nature of the revelation and “for any of the hurt I’ve caused to the people I love” as a result.

“I can’t undo the wrongs I’ve done, and I can’t change the past, I can only look ahead, and in order for me to survive, in order for me to have a life, I had to tell the truth, and I don’t own this, really.”

Asked if he felt his hand was forced, he said: “It was not that I was going to be lying again about it. I’m not that type of person, I’m not going to be running down Grafton Street singing I’m Coming Out by Diana Ross. This was not how I wanted to do this.”

Fleming finished the interview by saying he was hopeful he would be onstage again soon. “Hopefully this is the start of the rest of my life.”