Sinitta Calls Marriage a Revenge Move on Cowell

has admitted her marriage to ex-husband Andy Willner was 'a revenge move' on ex-boyfriend - and revealed that forcing herself to remain friends with the music mogul's partner amounted to 'self-harm'.

The 80s pop icon, 62, made the extraordinary confession during a candid appearance on the Suddenly Single podcast on Tuesday, in which she laid bare decades of heartbreak over The creator Simon, 66.

Sinitta - who became a familiar face on the talent show as Simon's guest at the judges' houses stage of the competition - first met him in a London nightclub when she was a teenager in the early 1980s.

She said she had always believed the pair would end up together, despite their famously on-off romance spanning more than 20 years.

'I was trying to make that relationship it,' she said. 'His narrative was just be patient, and you'll have everything you want. I assumed everything I wanted meant a normal family life with him. And then he met the love of his life and had a child. Silly me.' 

The So Macho hitmaker went on to describe her 2002 marriage to businessman Andy - with whom she adopted children Magdalena and Zac - as a reaction to Simon's refusal to settle down.

'The man that I married was actually a lovely person,' she said. 'It was a bit of a revenge move at the time, but it developed into something. But even during that relationship, it was obvious that there was unfinished business [with Simon].'

It is the first time Sinitta has described her seven-year marriage in such stark terms. She and Andy - who is now a yoga instructor - divorced in 2009 after he relocated to Hong Kong.

She said her pride and the public nature of her relationship with Simon drove her to seek out 'retaliation relationships' to prove she wasn't waiting around for him.

'It would be, "Well, if he's done that, then I'll date Brad Pitt, I'll date this model",' she said. 'But always intentionally thinking we will be together when we stop being crazy.

'Because I would have been ready to go at any time, but it was like my pride needed me to go and have a retaliation relationship to show I'm not desperate.'

The singer also discussed the emotional toll of maintaining her friendship with Simon's partner Lauren, 48, who started dating Simon in 2013 and is now his fiancée.

The couple share son Eric, 12, of whom Sinitta is godmother.

'She and I were best friends,' Sinitta said. 'We still worked together. We still got on with it. So I did a lot of, I think, self-harm by trying to squash all my feelings.'

She described learning that Simon - who had always told her he never wanted children - was expecting a baby with Silverman as 'the end of an era'.

'I didn't handle it very well,' she said. 'It had always been off, on, off, on, off, on. And I just thought that we were... I mean, we used to call ourselves Tom and Jerry.

'We didn't actually have physical spats or anything, but it was just this kind of emotional roller coaster that we'd be on.'

Sinitta, who previously revealed she had an abortion during her relationship with Simon in the 1980s, said therapy eventually helped her understand why she had clung to the Britain's Got Talent boss for so long.

'Apart from my mother, he was the constant person in my life,' she explained. 'When I'm on tour and becoming famous and all of that, there was still him everywhere or him at the end of the phone. So I think I'd found a sort of security in that person.'

She said growing up on the road with her mother, Canadian disco singer Miquel Brown, had left her craving stability - and that Simon, along with his parents, had provided it from a young age.

'When you start figuring out those things, you go, oh, so that's why I did that,' she said. 'I really didn't want to see the truth. I didn't want to have to realise that he doesn't love me the way I love him. I couldn't, I didn't want to know that.'

Despite the emotional revelations, Sinitta appeared to be in a positive place. She confirmed she is still seeing a mystery man based in Miami - contradicting reports last month that the pair had split.

'I still really like him,' she said. 'I think once you get to a certain age and you know what you want and what you like and if you care about someone and you get on, it's actually exciting, it's fun.'

She added that the long-distance nature of the relationship suits her lifestyle, having recently completed a pantomime run in Yorkshire.

'You don't get tired of each other, you don't get overfamiliar,' she said. 'I've been on tour, I've been doing pantomime and I'm doing anything I want to do, and then I have this lovely person that's in my life as well.'

The singer also said her time being single had taught her to stop being 'some chameleon who's supposed to just mould and change into whatever the next man kind of idealises'. 

She added: 'I learned to bend myself to someone else's wills and wishes. To actually be like, do you know what? I don't even like this, I don't even like that. And to have time to grow up and grow into me and realise what I'm actually all about.'