Phil Collins has revealed he’s back together with his third wife Orianne, six years after paying her £24.3million in Britain’s biggest ever divorce settlement. The 64-year-old said he and Orianne have been secretly living together for six months but “nobody has noticed.”

Phil CollinsPhil Collins is back together with his third wife Orianne.

Speaking to The Sun Collins said, “I'm back with my third wife - I haven't really talked about it. We've been together for a while, and nobody's noticed.” In a follow-up interview the music legend revealed he believes the couple never should have divorced.

“We decided that we shouldn’t have got divorced. She got remarried but we maintained a great relationship and she missed me, I missed her, the kids are really happy,” Collins said. “That’s what I mean by being wiser, you sort of say, ‘Look we made a mistake, we both agree that...’ How can you look your kids in the eyes and say, ‘Well, we should have got back together again but we didn’t.’”

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“It really doesn’t take anything to work it out. If you don’t like each other then that’s different. So it’s a good story.” The couple rekindled their romance after first becoming friends again. “Of course it wasn’t like that at the very beginning but divorce is like that,” the 64-year-old explained. “But no, we became great friends afterwards, when all that divorce dust settled we became best friends."

After the divorce Collins retired from music and was living in Switzerland to remain close to the couple’s two sons Nicholas and Matthew. However in 2008 Orianne and her sons moved to Miami, causing Collins to begin drinking too much.

“I desperately wanted to live with the boys. I missed out on so much. And I retired so that I could be at home and then they moved. And when they moved to Miami, I was suddenly instead of being ten minutes away, I was ten hours away. And so that’s when I started drinking a bit too much and that whole story happened,” he added.

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Collins also opened up to Billboard this week about his struggles with alcohol following his divorce, saying he had now been sober for three years. “I had retired to be with my kids in Switzerland, but then they left to go to Miami with their mom,” he said.

“I'd wake up, turn the TV on and have a glass of wine. You look up at the end of the day and you've knocked off a couple of bottles -- and you're still sober! I spent way too much time horizontal. It started to be bad for my body. I almost died,” he added. “My organs were beginning to shut down. But I'm all right now.”