It’s been 16 years since Joe McElderry won The X Factor, which changed his life overnight and propelled him to stardom.
However, as far as success is concerned, his personal life is moving at a much slower pace.
The singer, now 34, has opened up about his dating life, admitting that he thinks he’ll be ‘eternally single’ after struggling to find The One.
Joe, who was just 18 when he auditioned for Simon Cowell’s ITV talent show, where Cheryl was his mentor, came out as gay shortly after his big win.
In a new interview, the performer said despondently: ‘I’ve been single for a very, very long time.’
Joe continued to The Sun: ‘And I mean, listen, I’m open to meeting somebody, and I’d love to meet somebody, but I think dating is so hard now.
‘Online dating is a minefield, and I don’t think people meet people unless it’s on dating apps now, which is crazy. It’s kind of sad in a way.’
The Geordie added that any potential partners would need the approval of his grandmother, Hilda, with whom he shares a close bond, as they even host a podcast called That’s Ridiculous together.
Declaring her a ‘very good judge of character’, Joe said: ‘You’ll know if she doesn’t trust somebody or she doesn’t like somebody.
‘In our industry, you can come across some dodgy people, but she can call it out in seconds of somebody walking in a room, and I’m like, “That’s a wise woman”.’
The Climb hitmaker has a packed schedule for the end of 2025, as he’s heading out on tour across the Northeast.
Since winning The X Factor in 2009, as well as achieving five top 20 hit albums, including two reaching the top three, Joe has become widely known for his musical theatre work.
In 2011, he won the second series of Popstar to Operastar and, in 2015, took the lead as Joseph in the Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat tour.
Last year, he was also in panto in Newcastle, playing Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio.
Joe certainly didn’t have an easy introduction to fame, though, as he’s said he felt ‘forced’ to share his sexuality publicly after endless rumours.
‘I made the choice to speak openly about this,’ Joe said at the time of his coming out as a teen.
However, in an interview in 2024, he recalled of his X Factor experience: ‘There’s a little bit of a myth; I think that people assume that I went onto the show and all of my family and friends knew I was gay, and it was this secret I kept from everyone.
‘Nobody knew; I wasn’t out to anybody, and I was still working out who I was.’
He added to BBC Radio Newcastle: ‘I remember sitting in a press roundtable interview, pretty early on in the live shows of The X Factor, and the journalists at the time… they were hammering us with really, really personal questions.
‘I was not prepared for that at all. Never mind as a human being, but as an 18-year-old boy who had never left the Northeast before in terms of a working environment, and you go into this room, and I didn’t know the answers to those questions.’
Joe, who would go on to duet with the late George Michael in the X Factor final, steered away from responding to deeply personal interview questions at the time due to the fact that he didn’t even know who he was himself.
He continued: ‘People always say you always know, and you probably do, but it’s coming to terms with it in your own mind and being okay with it.’
After the show ended, Joe ‘discovered that [he] was gay’ and who he ‘wanted to be’.
But, sadly, he hadn’t even processed the self-discovery before feeling like he had to make an announcement.
‘It wasn’t until long ago that I was like, that was actually ridiculous, that it was front-page news because it shouldn’t be.
‘It’s so non-important. It’s important in my life, and it’s important for who you are as a person, but for everybody in the country to have to find out about that, and for it to be on front-page newspaper, it’s ridiculous.’
In the years since coming out, while Joe is proud to be gay, he has not shared any glimpses of his dating life online.
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