Phil Collins has told the Sunday Times that alcohol nearly killed him for a second time in 2024, with his five children called to his bedside as doctors considered switching off his life support.
The 75-year-old spent seven months in hospital. His pancreas is now permanently scarred and his kidneys barely function, he said.
'My organs were just seizing up'
"My kidneys were packing up, my organs were just seizing up," Collins said. "People were coming to say goodbye. But I don't remember them coming, I didn't have no idea this was going on. They were all worried that they wouldn't see me again. It could all have gone so terribly wrong."
Wine was his drink of choice. "I'd have wine when I woke up. That was what I'd want for breakfast, a glass of wine," he said. He said he had been sober around the time of his 2016 book thanks to Antabuse, a drug prescribed to alcoholics that triggers severe nausea and headaches if they drink. He added that he can no longer remember when his drinking spiralled, saying "when I was drinking the calendar goes out the window."
An interview at the Royal Albert Hall
Collins previously detailed his battle with alcoholism in a memoir. During a 2016 interview at London's Royal Albert Hall, he was served two large glasses of chilled white wine before the conversation began, with his team exchanging nervous glances. At an earlier low point, he had been air-lifted from the Caribbean to a New York hospital with acute pancreatitis caused by his drinking, and later entered rehab in Wiltshire.
Having said he was three years sober, he was asked about his lapsed sobriety and replied: "I am quite capable of having two or three glasses of wine, saying goodnight and walking away." A BBC journalist later admitted feeling "concern" when Collins "orders that glass of wine" while promoting the book extolling sobriety.
After multiple spine and knee surgeries, his back was damaged from years behind the drum kit, and he was visibly frail. A few days after the interview, he fell in his bathroom and later posted a picture of a black eye. Yet he has sold 100 million records with Genesis and as a solo artist, and remains the only performer to have played both UK and US Live Aid shows.
Reconciliation with Orianne
Orianne was 21 when she met Collins in 1994 as his translator in Switzerland. He had previously split from Jill, mother of actress Lily Collins, by fax after 12 years. He married Orianne in 1999, but the couple later split, and she moved with their two children to Miami in 2012.
By 2016, they had reconciled despite a reported £25 million divorce settlement in 2008. "She didn't give me the money back. We never had that conversation," he laughed.
That reunion did not last. Four years later, Orianne eloped to Las Vegas to secretly marry a lover, Collins said. "She spent a lot of time in Las Vegas and bought a house there. And I was thinking it was for work. And I think some of it was, but some of it was definitely not. She's not in my best books."
He described her actions as "kind of unpleasant, unethical and not very nice," and said he could not forgive her yet but they remain in touch as co-parents. He still carries a torch for her, but added: "I don't think it's a good idea right now. Just because I know what I'm like. I would probably fall again."
No more alcohol
Collins now says alcohol is firmly off the cards. "I was very lucky to have come out of that. Needless to say, I haven't had a drink since," he said.
