JAMES Arthur has admitted he regrets his 2017 autobiography Back To The Boy in which he said a fling with Rita Ora turned him into a sex addict.
The former X Factor winner dated the pop star for a few months in 2013 with James, 33, later admitting that he was “bitter” when she dumped him.
He then claimed their “magic” romance turned him into a sex addict and a “slag”.
But he’s now said of the memoir: “It was done at a time when there was just a lot of stuff going on. I’d just made my comeback and we tried to do too much at once.
“When I look back at that there’s certain things I wouldn’t have shared or have explained in the way that I did.
“If I could stop the production of the book now I probably would because there’s stuff that has affected family relationships, not long term, but at the time it hurt people.
“There’s things I shared about relationships where I should have considered the people involved a bit more, I think.”
James opened up about his sex addiction — as well as his rise to fame and spiral into depression — in the autobiography.
He wrote: “If I’m honest, I became a bit of a slag after Rita. I was chatting to hundreds of women online or on Whats-App after swapping numbers with them via Twitter, and I started to sleep with so many of them I lost count.
“They were usually the same type — Babestation girls or glamour models. If I saw someone I fancied I’d contact her on social media and tell her blatantly I wanted to have sex.”
“It was ridiculously easy. There would be no emotional attachment and it would be just pure sex, and with one or two exceptions that was how it was.”
James has been busy in the studio and today has returned with his new single Medicine — the first track to be taken from his upcoming fourth album.
The guitar-driven anthem is a love letter with deeply personal lyrics, as he sings: “When I’m suicidal, you don’t let me spiral.”
It was written last year after a bumpy beginning to 2020 which saw him hospitalised following a series of panic attacks.
But James told HOAR his long-term girlfriend, dancer Jessica Grist, and his music helped him through.