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TV presenter Caroline Flack passed away on February 15, 2020 at her London home. The 40-year-old was best known as a TV personality and popular TV presenter The bubbly Brit presented the BAFTA-award-winning Love Island and won Strictly Come Dancing in 2014.
Caroline’s relationships made headlines and often took the spotlight away from her career, engaging in high-profile relationships and being arrested for a domestic dispute.
Her shocking death, at just 40, led to an outpouring of grief, leading to campaigns to change the way the press covers celebrity’s private lives. Her public struggles with her mental health also led to conversations to how people treat people online, especially the press to those in the public eye.
So, who was the late and much-missed Caroline Flack?
9/9 How Caroline Flack Started Her Career As An Actress
Caroline Flack grew up near the town of Thetford, in Norfolk and attended Great Hockham Primary School and then Wayland High School in Watton. She went on to study dancing and musical theatre at Bodywork Company in Cambridge
She then moved away from East Anglia to London to pursue her career in the entertainment industry, which started in 2002 when she played Bubbles on the sketch show Bo’ Selecta, with comedian Keith Lemon. She had early presenting jobs on E4 Music and on the CBBC channel. She became a hit on youth TV with her bubbly and fun personality.
8/9 Caroline Flack Was A Popular TV Presenter
Caroline Flack career soon took off. She joined soccer star Ian Wright when Sky One revived the game show Gladiators. She also became one of the hosts of I‘m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here Now! in 2009.
She went on to host ITV spin-off, The Xtra Factor, two years later, before presenting the main The X-Factor with Olly Murs in 2015. Their short stint presenting the reality singing show was less than popular, but it didn’t stop her career in entertainment.
7/9 Caroline Flack’s Reality Show Win Led To Theater Career
Caroline Flack won 2014 series of Strictly Come Dancing, with the professional dancer Pasha Kovalev as her partner. This reality show stint reignited her passion for performing. In 2017, she starred as Irene in a touring stage production of George and Ira Gershwin’s musical Crazy for You.
In 2018, she played Roxie Hart in a Christmas West End run of Chicago at the Phoenix theatre.
6/9 Caroline Flack Became Known As Love Island Host
When Love Island was relaunched in 2015, Caroline Flack was cast as host, helping make it one of the biggest shows on British TV. When the show won the Bafta for best reality show that year, she went on stage and picked up the award.
“I think people just relate to the situations,” Flack told the Telegraph in 2017. “It doesn’t matter who you are, what you do, where you’re from, how old you are, it doesn’t matter how much experience you’ve got in life, how educated you are: emotions are all the same.”
She said that her own experiences in the public eye helped her support and advise the Love Island contestants: “I know what it’s like to be that victim online. And that’s why I hate seeing it happen to them.”
However, in December 2019, Flack announced that she would stand down as presenter after being charged with assaulting her boyfriend. Laura Whitmore took on the role until 2022, Maya Jama is set to present upcoming seasons.
5/9 Who Did Caroline Flack Date?
At the time of her death, Caroline Flack was dating tennis player and model Lewis Burton. They started dating in the summer of 2019.
Flack also dated Prince Harry in 2009, but the relationship ended quickly. In her 2015 autobiography Storm In A C Cup, she said she and the prince had “spent the evening chatting and laughing”, but “once the story got out, that was it. We had to stop seeing each other.”
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In 2011, she dated singer Harry Styles. This caused controversy because at the time, Harry was 17, and Caroline was 31. “It began to go wrong when Harry was pictured coming out of my house one morning,” Caroline wrote in her autobiography.
“And once that was out, it was open season.” she revealed, talking candidly about the harassment “After that anyone could say anything. In the street people started shouting at me ‘pedophile’ and ‘’pervert.'”
When she started getting death threats from One Direction fans, the two decided to part ways. Styles paid tribute to her at the 2020 BRIT Awards with a sombre black ribbon pinned to his jacket.
4/9 Caroline Flack’s High Profile Police Incidents
On December 13, 2019, Caroline Flack was charged with assault after an incident reported by Burton in her Islington flat. An official inquest later heard that Flack had hit him while he slept because she suspected he was cheating. Burton did not support the assault charge, and in a statement, he said the last time he had seen Flack “she was not in a good place”.
Flack pleaded not guilty to the charges of common assault at Highbury Corner Magistrates Court on December 23, 2019. Many connect her suicide to the public scrutiny of this case. She died while awaiting trial for alleged assault, fearing the press intrusion.
“Although her general fluctuating (mental) state was a background and important in her death, I find the reason for her taking her life was she now knew she was being prosecuted for certainty, and she knew she would face the media, press, publicity – it would all come down upon her,” the coroner said, a statement her family agreed with.
3/9 Caroline Flack’s Sad Death In 2020
Caroline Flack was found dead in her north London flat on Saturday, February 15, 2020. It was later confirmed she had taken her own life.
Flack’s mother, Chris Flack, said her daughter had faced a “show trial” and been “hounded by the press” in the weeks before she took her life.
Tributes soon poured in from celebrities, friends and Love Island Contestants. Her death started a national conversational about mental health.
2/9 Caroline Flack’s Legacy
Two days before her death, Caroline Flack posted photos of herself with her dogs on Instagram, with no caption except a simple love heart.
Her last public message was on Christmas Eve – the day after her court hearing.
“This kind of scrutiny and speculation is a lot to take on for one person to take on their own…” she wrote. “I’m a human being at the end of the day and I’m not going to be silenced when I have a story to tell and a life to keep going with.”
“I’m taking some time out to get feeling better and learn some lessons from situations I’ve got myself into to. have nothing but love to give and best wishes for everyone,” she wrote.
“In a world where you can be anything, be kind,” An inspiring quote shared to Caroline’s Instagram page read in December 2019. This message became a popular hashtag on social media, with many people hoping her sad death with engage people to act kinder to others online.
1/9 Public’s Reaction To Caroline Flack’s Loss
Laura Whitmore, who replaced Caroline Flack on Love Island, appealed to listeners on her BBC Radio 5 Live show “be kind” to others, and added: “To paparazzi and tabloids looking for a cheap sell, to trolls hiding behind a keyboard – enough.”
Whitmore added around the time of her death: “I’m not going to pretend she was perfect, but is anyone? She lived every mistake publicly, under the scrutiny of the media.”
Following her tragic death in 2020, various petitions sprung up online, campaigning to make media bullying and harassment a criminal offence, as well as promoting a safer environment on social media.
