Olly Murs has opened up about his infamous 2015 X Factor live TV blunder, when he mixed up the judges' scores and prematurely announced that contestant Monica Michael was going home.

Speaking to the Evening Standard, the singer and TV presenter said at first he "laughed off" the mistake, but the resulting press backlash was so bad he eventually ended up in therapy.

"The papers didn't laugh it off — they made a massive deal about it," Olly explained. "The media attention, and the social media aspect, upset me the most.

"They really tried to take me to the cleaners. They tried to make me lose my job over a silly, small mistake.

"And when I went back to singing, it made me overthink what I was doing: 'I'm going to forget the lyrics, what I'm doing …'

"So that was something I needed to speak to a therapist about. And I'm not scared to admit that — that's the stigma that men have."

Olly, who releases new album Moves on Friday (October 5) faced similar media ridicule last November when he tweeted that he had heard gunfire while shopping in London's Selfridges department store on Oxford Street.

"Piers Morgan and the guys jumped on it massively," he said.

"People can say what they want, and I'm not embarrassed at all — I'm more embarrassed for the people who tweeted or made a joke about it.

"I can speak for the 400, 500, 1,000 people who were in Selfridges that day — everyone went mental. I'm running for my life because I'm thinking someone's behind me, shooting.

"I'll never speak to Piers Morgan again because he was bang out of order… It was pathetic."

We would encourage anyone who identifies with the topics raised in this article to reach out. Organisations who can offer support include Samaritans on 116 123 (www.samaritans.org), and Mind on 0300 123 3393 (www.mind.org.uk).

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Stephanie Chase Stephanie Chase is a freelance news writer at Digital Spy.

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