My ex George tried to strangle me in rage after Bryan Adams fed me broccoli – he beat me up every day, says Kerry Katona

KERRY KATONA’S former husband tried to strangle her in a moving car after she told him how rocker Bryan Adams fed her vegetables from his fork.

In her new autobiography, the Atomic Kitten star reveals for the first time the extent of George Kay’s domestic abuse.

She writes: “I could barely breathe and honestly thought I was done for, when he released his grip, pulled over, opened the passenger side door and dragged me out of the car by my hair.

“I fell, hitting my head on the door. He spat on me, got back in the car and drove off.

“All because Bryan Adams had fed me broccoli off a fork.”

Kerry, now 42, recalled her encounter with Bryan during a house-viewing in Wigan with George after spotting a Bryan Adams CD on a shelf.

“I’m recounting the tale to George and the landlord,” Kerry writes in Whole Again: Love, Life And Me.

“I had this big plate of vegetables in front of me and I didn’t fancy them, but Bryan kept urging me in his fantastic Canadian drawl, ‘Eat them, you have to eat your greens!’

“’And then, Bryan Adams fed me broccoli off a fork’, I told George and this random landlord proudly.

“There was nothing sexual or romantic about that moment with Bryan. It was just a jokey exchange between two people who had just met and were getting along well — in front of their significant others.

“But George didn’t see it that way. We left the house-viewing quickly, got in the car and as he drove off he had one hand on the steering wheel and one around my neck.”

The incident was the start of systematic abuse by the former rugby player, who would punch, push and kick Kerry in jealous rages during their three-year marriage, which ended in 2017.

She reveals how George — who died age 39 in 2019 after crushing a ball of cocaine inside a sock and “eating” the contents — once accused her of flirting with Antony Costa, from boyband Blue, during filming for ITV2’s The Big Reunion in 2013 and called her a “disgusting slut”.

She writes: “He locked me in the bathroom as punishment. I slept in a bathtub that night. The next day I had to film a scene for the show.”

Kerry married George six months after the birth of their daughter Dylan-Jorge in April 2014 — and he abused her even while she was pregnant.

‘My body went cold’

She reveals: “Even as my stomach grew, he would push me over, kick me and spit in my face.

“Soon after he’d apologise, tell me how much he loved me and gently let me know it was all my fault because I pushed his buttons. And then I’d be the one apologising.”

To cope with the beatings and pressures of being a mum of five, Kerry turned to alcohol.

The singer, who won I’m A Celebrity in 2004 and appeared on Celebrity Big Brother in 2011, started downing three bottles of prosecco a day.

Kerry has overcome her drink and drugs issues but feels unable to forgive herself for staying with George.

She tried to hide the beatings from the children she had with Westlife’s Brian McFadden — Molly, 21, Lily-Sue, 19, and Heidi, 15 — as well as 14-year-old Max, whose dad is her second husband, Mark Croft, and Dylan-Jorge, nine. But she was not always successful.

Recalling another incident, Kerry writes: “George got me in a chokehold, pinning me to the back seat of the car.

“He was squeezing my throat so tightly I thought I was going to pass out when he suddenly let me go, spat on me and retreated.

“As I got up and took DJ in my arms, I looked up at my house and I saw Max in the window watching.

“Even now, writing this, my stomach is in knots with the guilt of thinking how scared they must have been every time George raised his voice, or their terror as they heard their mum cry.

“It was an endless, vicious cycle of breaking up, making up, violence and sadness.

“I was stuck in something I was powerless to get out of. I was failing as a mother and as a woman and I hated myself for it.”

Painfully, Kerry recalls how Lily would help her cover up the marks inflicted by George so her other children would not see them.

She writes: “After taking a particularly bad beating and staying on the sofa overnight, I woke up to find her there, stroking my hair.

“She had some concealer with her and gently put it on my bruises, to cover them, without saying a word.”

Towards the end of their relationship she turned down jobs, and even ditched plans to return to Celebrity Big Brother in 2016, over fears he would hurt her children.

She says: “He looked me square in the eye, and in the most sinister voice I’d ever heard, said, ‘Leave those kids with me and watch what f***ing happens’.

“I went into the spare bedroom, sat down on the bed and cried.

“By this point he was so violent and so abusive, I believe whole- heartedly he would’ve killed them if I’d taken the job.”

Kerry eventually broke free from George after she went to the funeral of Mel B’s dad in 2017.

Seeing his coffin made her realise she could be next if she didn’t escape the beatings.

After she left, George threatened to murder their daughter.

Kerry, who was supported by specialist police officers, explains: “He’d planned on injecting her with heroin then killing himself.

“My whole body went cold when I was told.”

George was found dead in a hotel in Warrington, Cheshire, in July 2019 following his cocaine overdose.

Kerry recalls visiting him in the chapel of rest and says: “I took one last look at him. This cold, dead corpse. I could smell him, I could hear his voice, I could see him bent over the kitchen sink with a knife.

“I shuddered and shook it off, pausing only one last time to sadly whisper, ‘Why did you do it?’ I wasn’t sure if I was referring to the violence, the death, the drugs or all of it. All I knew is I’d never find out the answer.”

Kerry has gone on to find love again with personal trainer Ryan Mahoney — but fears the pain inflicted by George on her family will affect them for ever.

She adds: “I do believe that all the children need some kind of counselling as a result of the things they witnessed.

“And this is something I will never be able to forgive myself for.”

• Kerry Katona: Whole Again, (Mirror Books) is on sale October 13, £18.99. Pre-order now from Amazon.