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Jake Quickenden has opened up on the ‘raw’ grief he felt after the deaths of his brother and father within years of each other.
The former X Factor star’s brother Oliver died in 2013 aged 19 after being diagnosed with bone cancer.
Four years earlier, Jake suffered from the death of his father Paul from cancer also.
Speaking about the loss he faced on GB News on Wednesday, Jake opened up about how difficult Christmas can be for his family.
The 34-year-old said: ‘I lost my dad 13 years ago now. And then I lost my little brother ten years ago now.
‘It seems like a long time, but having gone through that kind of loss and grief it stays quite raw.
‘Christmas is going to be raw for anybody that’s lost somebody.
Jake felt like he ‘failed’ his brother (Picture: Ken McKay/ITV/Shutterstock)
‘Sometimes I think back and I think how has it been 10 years that my little brother has not been with me?
‘It still seems like yesterday, Christmas is always quite a tough time.’
‘It’s been a very hard journey to get where I am today with how I deal with my grief and how I deal with my feelings.’
He continued: ‘It was really tough. I was 20 or 21 when I lost my dad, so it was really tough.
Jake is dad to one-year-old son Leo (Picture: Ken McKay/ITV/REX/Shutterstock)
‘They were kind of years where I was going out and I was finding out who I was.
‘So to have my dad taken away, it kind of made me lose a bit of myself. But I still had my two brothers.
‘So then when Oliver got diagnosed, and died so suddenly, I think he had it for three years, the bone cancer, that flipped everything again.
‘I felt like I needed to protect my younger brother.
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‘And then I couldn’t. I couldn’t help him. And that’s something that stayed with me for a long time.
‘The fact that I failed as an older brother, even though I know I didn’t, that’s how I feel.’
Jake, who shares baby son Leo with wife Sophie Church, now works as a grief ambassador, helping others open up and meet people in similar situations.
Bev Turner today airs from 10am on GB News.
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Jake lost both his father and brother to cancer.
