Sting reveals mother's affair

Sting has revealed his devastation at discovering his mother's affair when he walked in on her making love to a man in the porch of the family home.

In his new autobiography the star claims the pivotal moment turned him to music as a way of coping with his disturbed emotions.

Recalling his tough childhood in Tyneside, the former Police singer said playing the piano provided comfort from his parents' unhappy marriage. "Very little of what passes between my parents as conversation isn't freighted with sarcasm, acrid and barbed, sadistically fashioned to hurt and gouge and scarify," he recalls.

In an extract from his memoirs Broken Music, serialised in the Daily Telegraph, Sting said the marriage soured as his mother Audrey continued to see the other man.

"She may well have tried to end this clandestine relationship with Alan, but her emotional needs and her romantic bond with him would have been too strong. She had found the love of her life, and she would be torn tragically between this and the bonds of her family until she died."

Sting, whose real name is Gordon Sumner, found out about the affair with one of his milkman father's employees when he awoke early for school.

"As I turn the handle on the door there is a sudden panic on the other side of the glass. I manage to open the door only a crack before it is violently shut again.

"I have seen nothing but I run and behind me I hear the front door slam. My mother doesn't find me when she comes up to my room."

He worshipped his mother and one of his earliest memories was watching the soles of her shoes on the pedals as she played the piano.

He had no idea if his father knew of the affair but Alan disappeared from his job shortly afterwards.

Despite this, Sting's family life did not return to normal. He said: "I wonder if I am to blame, and have no one to reassure me that I'm not."

But Sting turned to music to cope and spent hours "hammering away at the piano" which "sounds like hell and strangely gives me comfort."

"Without the piano an outlet, I might well have become delinquent. God knows I had the contacts."