Play all audios:
Conor Maynard has finally spoken out about his paternity scandal with Traitors star Charlotte Chilton, confessing that he experienced "panic attacks". The singer, 32, was
interviewed on the Friday (May 30) episode of ITV's This Morning, opening up in his first television interview with presenters Alison Hammond and Paddy McGuinness. During the chat,
Conor discussed the challenging past year and his efforts to progress in his personal life and music career. He previously claimed that a DNA test had confirmed he is not the father of
Charlotte Chilton's daughter Penelope, who came into the world last October. Following a brief fling, Charlotte went on to get pregnant and claimed Conor was the father, reports Wales
Online. However, Conor claimed that he underwent a paternity assessment, revealing the result was negative. While on This Morning, he disclosed his experience of what he described as
"one of the worst years of his life". He began by noting: "Realistically, right now is the right time to speak on it as the last year has been really difficult and mental
health is something I've struggled with for a big portion of my life and this most recent year has definitely been up there in terms of my experience and battle with it." Alison
and Paddy probed the pop artist about the turn of events, to which he admitted: "I was aware of the situation before, however, I had no idea it was going to go to press. I never knew
any of that was going to happen. "In my mind, obviously, the natural proceeding would be to do a paternity test to make sure everything was 100% certain, and we deal with it
accordingly. And obviously that's not the way it went." He continued: "It was difficult to remain silent. I was instantly painted as a deadbeat dad, and all these comments
across all of my social media were very much all about that. "You want to defend yourself, you want to tell your side of the story. But I also felt that wasn't right until I knew
the truth myself. And I didn't want to force that." Paddy then questioned the singer on his immediate feelings upon receiving the results, to which Conor confessed: "I
actually felt like I was going to have a massive panic attack the second I found out. "That's the difficult truth about mental health: something traumatic happens to you, and then
when that traumatic event stops, you don't go 'oh I'm fine now, everything is fine. Great I can now move on'." He elaborated: "It doesn't really work like
that. Initially, my friends were like 'Do you want to grab a drink? We'll go do something, go hang out near your house, we can just talk'. "But I stayed at home with my
girlfriend. We stayed in that night and realistically tried to stay calm and have a relaxed night." Alison revealed that Charlotte's representatives were contacted for a response,
but she opted not to comment. Confirming, Alison said: "We did reach out to Charlotte's representatives to offer her the chance to have a right of reply, but they declined to make
a statement at this time." _Reach PLC has also reached out to Charlotte's reps for comment._ THIS MORNING AIRS WEEKDAYS FROM 10AM ON ITV AND ITVX