Top rugby referee Nigel Owens has bulimia relapse

To rugby referee Nigel Owens has admitted he has had a bulimia relapse brought on by Christmas excess.

The Welshman told the Jeremy Vine Show on BBC Radio Two that he is still battling the eating disorder.

Asked if he thought he had conquered bulimia Owens said: "If you'd have asked me this two weeks ago, I'd have said yes. But, unfortunately in the last two weeks and the Christmas period, the pressures of Christmas and the drinking and eating too much, I have made myself ill unfortunately once or twice in the last couple of weeks when I see myself putting a bit of weight on, knowing I was too eating too much."

Last year he revealed his battle was ongoing.

''When I did the Panorama doc, I learnt a lot by speaking to people who had experienced far worse than I did," Owens said.

"I have been very lucky compared to how much people have suffered with it. I managed to keep it at bay for the best part of seven or eight months but unfortunately it has come back a bit now.

"Not as frequently as the past, but once is still too many. It's an ongoing battle that I need to think about how am I going to deal with it and get some expert help."

Owens revealed in the Panorama documentary that he had made himself sick three or four times while refereeing the England test series in Argentina last June.

The openly gay referee told Panorama his bulimia began at the age of 18 when he was struggling with his sexuality and battling chronic depression.

At the core of his problems was a sexuality which it took him years to come to terms with, even longer to admit to, and made him indescribably ashamed. He became bulimic and frequented gyms where he worked out and got hooked on liquid self-injected steroids, trying to develop a physique which could somehow allow him to feel some sense of self-worth.

He tried to hide the bulimia from his parents by pretending he was suffering from colitis.
This was part of a pattern of subterfuge which would have been comical, had it not been so desperate.

It included him pulling out the plug of the family video recorder so his parents might not watch the rugby show which he knew would allude to his sexuality and furtively glancing into hairdressing salons to ''see if I could get some idea of how a gay man would look''.