Veteran BBC broadcaster David Hamilton, fondly known as “Diddy,” has opened up about a turbulent chapter in his life when he “fell in love” with a sex worker during his first marriage.
Hamilton, now 87, was one of the most recognisable voices on British radio in the 1970s, best known for his work on BBC Radio 1 and Top of the Pops.
Speaking in an interview with Best magazine, the broadcaster recalled that despite what he described as a “happy marriage” to his first wife, Sheila Moore, becoming parents changed their relationship dynamic.
“I went to meet her at Liverpool Street station. She was sitting on her suitcase wearing a fur coat, which she told me later she’d borrowed. I just looked at her and thought, wow. I think if anything spoils a marriage, it’s children. Suddenly, the man is taking a back seat,” he said.
It was during this period that Hamilton met Roz, a woman he later learned was a sex worker. The two began a relationship that lasted four years.
“My wife found out because I talked about Roz a lot. I was head over heels. I left my wife and children, and we lived together for four years,” he confessed.
Hamilton said he even helped Roz start a small business before eventually ending the relationship, realising he was “getting in too deep.”
In 1993, a decade after being set up on a blind date, Hamilton married his second wife, Dreena, who he described as “the wind beneath my wings.” Despite friends warning her about his past reputation as a “womaniser,” the pair have remained together ever since.
In 2022, Hamilton revealed he had been diagnosed with polycythaemia vera, a rare blood cancer that causes overproduction of red blood cells. “Everybody who sees me says how well I look. Too many red blood cells give you a very rosy complexion, so it looks like you’ve got a sun tan,” he told The Daily Mail at the time.
