The Mysterious Girl hitmaker, who’s of Greek heritage, says the comments from the past still affect him.
When he was six, Peter’s family moved from Harrow in London to Australia, with the singer saying: ‘In the early years in Australia, I suffered a lot of racism. It was a rough time.
‘I had an English accent, curly hair, a big nose – and we really stood out,’ the 49-year-old added. ‘I still straighten my hair because the curly hair reminds me of me being that little kid and those kids calling me what they did at school.’
He added to The Mirror: ‘I wouldn’t just turn up to an event with full curly hair. I just can’t bring myself to do it, even now, and I’ve had therapy. I still see what those kids called me when I look in the mirror.’
Peter said his feelings of insecurity got worse when he was the victim of a knife attack in his late teens, when a gang held a blade to his throat in the bathroom of a Sydney nightclub.
In 2016, he told OK! magazine: ‘We were grabbed and a knife was held to my throat in the bathroom. I was petrified. The guys were like “who do you think you are?” – I thought they were going to kill me. I’ve had many situations like that.
‘Growing up there was one of the hardest experiences of my life. Most Aussies are awesome and i don’t think that would happen now. I’m talking about a time when the Gold Coast was not multi-cultural.’
After moving to Sydney when he was six, Peter’s family moved to the Gold Coast when he was nine.
After growing up in Australia, he was sent to the UK to work with producers at PWL Studios, which resulted in his breakthrough hit Gimme Little Sign.
When his song Mysterious Girl shot up the charts in 1996, Peter returned to the UK and now lives in Surrey with his wife Emily and their kids Amelia, eight, and Theodore, five, as well as sharing children Junior, 17, and Princess, 15, with Katie Price.
However, Emily recently said the pair have spoken about a move back to Australia to be closer to Peter’s elderly parents.
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