Blondie's Chris Stein reveals he is still 'very close' to Debbie Harry: 'My wife puts up with it...'

Chris Stein is still "very close" to his ex-girlfriend Debbie Harry.

The 74-year-old guitarist got together with his former Blondie bandmate Debbie, in 1973 and they were together for more than a decade during the height of their fame but even though he is now married to actress Barbara Sicuranza, he admitted that he is still in touch with his ex-partner.

He told The Times: "We are still very close. But I’ve been married for 25 years now."

When it was suggested to him that it must be "very odd" for him to be constantly questioned about his old relationship, Chris agreed and explained: "Yeah.Well, my wife puts up with it. She does."

Debbie, 78, even cared for Chris when he was diagnosed with pemphigus vulgaris, a rare autoimmune disease of the skin and broke the band up to look after him, but the couple went their separate ways themselves in 1985.

Chris has retained a professional relationship with Debbie over the years and went on to have Valentine, 26, as well as Akira with Barbara but his youngest died age of 19 last year after taking an overdose and he admitted that doing drugs was "amusing and easy" in his heyday, but it is not anymore.

He said: "We lost our daughter. It was a terrible thing, There’s this epidemic now. It was amusing and easy and we looked up to our heroes, [William] Burroughs and Lou Reed and all these people. It wasn’t like it was definitely going to kill you. I would see people outside nodding out. But that's not the visuals that you see nowadays.

"Akira was such a great character. We just couldn’t…

"She had tremendous anxieties and she was numbing herself. It’s a long story. I’ve been in therapy about it."