When Molly-Mae and Tommy Fury reconciled earlier this year, it was on one condition: That he ‘worked’ on his relationship with alcohol.
Despite unfounded rumours circulating online that Tommy had cheated on her, it was booze, Tommy admitted himself, that had been a major factor contributing to their breakup in August 2024.
‘We broke up because I had a problem with alcohol and I couldn’t be the partner that I wanted to be anymore,’ Tommy told Men’s Health in an emotional mea culpa back in January.
‘It kills me to say it, but I couldn’t. I loved a pint of beer, loved to drink. It was the drink, and the drink is not a good thing.
‘You need to get a grip of it. If you’re in the same spot as me, where you just think that it’s going to cure all your problems, it doesn’t. ‘You wake up even worse and you want to drink more to try and feel happy again. That’s the cycle of it. I’ve got myself out of that now.’
It seems, however, that Tommy does still enjoy a drink every now and then. Some attendees at the premiere of his fly-on-the-wall BBC docuseries in August, held at the popular nightclub Printworks in Manchester, have revealed to me that Tommy became rather bleary-eyed as the evening wore on.
Guests said he was drinking beer and being loud and boisterous – embarrassingly so.
One said: ‘Tommy looked very drunk at his BBC premiere. It was very embarrassing and everyone thought the same thing: was he not supposed to be going sober?
Molly-Mae and Tommy Fury announced their split in August 2024 – but in May this year they rekindled their relationship
Molly has opened up about her struggles with Tommy’s drinking, saying ‘alcohol caused problems for us. It got to a point where I wasn’t looking forward to anything because alcohol affected it so much’
Tommy himself has admitted that his heavy drinking meant he couldn’t be the ‘the right partner to Molly’
‘It was the same as last year, where most events he would just turn up, drink the bar dry and leave after getting his Instagram photos.’
When approached for comment, a spokesman for Tommy told me that the boxing star only ‘had two beers across a four-hour period and was in no way intoxicated’.
One person conspicuously absent from the event was Tommy’s partner, Molly-Mae Hague. The couple’s relationship has been the topic of feverish speculation on social media since they announced their separation in joint Instagram statements in August 2024. The bombshell news came a year after Molly, 26, and Tommy, who met on reality TV show Love Island in 2019, revealed they were engaged.
Although the pair are now firmly back together, Molly chose not to attend Tommy’s premiere. Spokesmen for the couple claimed that she ‘was keen to let her partner have his own moment in the spotlight without the risk of overshadowing him’. Another of Molly’s representatives said that she was ‘away working’.
Instead, Tommy was supported by his father John and mother Chantal as well as his brother Roman.
Perhaps it was better that Molly stayed away. Speaking in her own docuseries Behind It All, released on Amazon Prime in January and which is now gearing up for a second series, Molly opened up about how alcohol had affected their relationship.
‘I feel really traumatised by the last couple of months,’ she told her mother Debbie on the show.
‘Alcohol has really messed things up. Alcohol caused problems for us. It got to a point where I wasn’t looking forward to anything because alcohol affected it so much.’
Tellingly, Molly’s mother replied: ‘I can only cite a couple of examples where he’s had some alcohol and it’s not led to anything disastrous.’ To which Molly responded: ‘I don’t know any. That’s why my relationship with alcohol is so damaged.’
Before their split, the couple had been in talks to film a joint reality show on Prime but after their breakup, Molly got the deal. After it aired, the BBC announced Tommy’s own documentary, Tommy: The Good. The Bad. The Fury. It shows his efforts to ‘get his life back on track’.
In the documentary, Tommy confessed: ‘Drink got a hold of me. Twenty shots a night, 20 beers, every day I would have a drink and I used to drink to get black out drunk. And that’s what led to me not being the right partner to Molly.’
He admitted being so drunk he didn’t remember the day last summer when Molly and their two-year-old daughter Bambi walked out on him.
Tommy’s father told the cameras: ‘I knew from dealing with Tyson [Tommy’s half-brother and champion boxer] that when the drinking starts to come into play, I thought “Oh, not again”. I don’t want to work with a piss can. I told Molly, walk away.
‘Because if he’s not going to change himself, he doesn’t think that much of you.’
Though the documentary charted Tommy’s attempts to mend his relationship with alcohol, that didn’t stop him mingling with guests at the premiere with a beer in hand. Among them were ex-Love Island star Kaz Crossley, 30, footballer Phil Foden, 25, and bodybuilder Eddie Hall, 37. Tellingly, on Tuesday Molly released a new trailer for series two of Behind It All, featuring emotional clips in which she admitted she’s unsure what the future will bring after rekindling her romance.
‘Tommy and I, we’re back together – but I never know what tomorrow is going to bring,’ she said.
Let’s just hope Tommy doesn’t fall back into his party boy ways.
