Caroline Flack’s former boyfriend Lewis Burton has gone from obscurity to ubiquity to obscurity again. Now, the professional tennis player is back in the spotlight for the first time in five years.
It’s the result of a critically acclaimed new Disney+ documentary series that explored the final months of Caroline Flack’s life, plucking Burton’s name from the general public’s long-term memory and thrusting it back into the forefront of our minds.
Caroline Flack: Search for the Truth tracks the story of the beloved British TV presenter’s “fall from grace” following a reported assault on her boyfriend, Lewis Burton, back in December 2019.
In the series, it is revealed that Flack hit her boyfriend while trying to wake him to confront him about his alleged cheating. She had allegedly grown suspicious after finding messages from another woman on his phone. When police arrived at the scene, Burton claimed Flack had hit him over the head with a lamp. (Burton later stated on Instagram: “She did not hit me with a lamp.”)
Photos emerged from the scene showing pools of blood, which the media assumed were Burton’s. Tabloid headlines included: “Caroline Whack”, “Flack Attack”, “Flack’s Bedroom Bloodbath”. It later emerged that the blood belonged to Flack, who had cut herself down to the muscle in an attempted suicide.
Flack was charged with assault, and the case was set to go to trial. She died by suicide on February 15, 2020, aged 40, before her case could be heard.
“My heart is broken we had something so special,” then-27-year-old Burton wrote on Instagram the day after Flack’s death. “I am so lost for words I am in so much pain I miss you so much I know you felt safe with me you always said I don’t think about anything else when I am with you and I was not allowed to be there this time I kept asking and asking.”
Burton continued: “I will be your voice baby I promise I will ask all the questions you wanted and I will get all the answers nothing will bring you back but I will try make you proud everyday. I love you with all my heart.”
Burton began dating Flack in July 2019, while she was filming the fifth season of Love Island. “Caroline and Lewis were introduced through mutual friends and have really hit it off. They’ve been on several dates now and are getting on really well,” a source told The Sun at the time.
“Lewis has been a true gent to Caroline and has patiently waited to see her. She has been jetting back and forth between London and Majorca as she juggles her presenting commitments but they have been spending time together when they can.”
After Flack died in February 2020, Burton went under the radar. Eight months later, it was reported that Burton was seeing someone new: Lottie Tomlinson, the younger sister of One Direction star Louis Tomlinson.
At this time, Lottie and Louis Tomlinson were dealing with their own personal grief following the death of their sister, 18-year-old Félicité Tomlinson, who died via an accidental drug overdose in March 2019.
Sources have claimed that Burton and Tomlinson were introduced at a party hosted by Caroline Flack’s friend, the hairstylist Lou Teasdale, to commemorate three months passing since the presenter’s death. Teasdale knew Burton through Flack, and Tomlinson through being close with the One Direction boys during their early days of fame. And just in case the web wasn’t tangled enough: Caroline Flack also dated Harry Styles for a short period in 2011, when he was 17 and she was 31.
Lottie Tomlinson recounted the start of her relationship with Burton in her book Lucky Girl: My Journey from Heartbreak to Healing, writing: “When Lewis and I first met at a club we had a brief chat and that was it. But I immediately thought he was handsome and fancied him right away. I didn't think those feelings were reciprocated though so I tried to put it to the back of my mind.
“Some time passed and we met again properly through mutual friends. Lewis and I instantly related to each other. We were going through similar situations as he had recently experienced a tragic loss and it felt natural to want to help him and to share with him the tools I'd learned through therapy and the two grief experiences I'd started to get to a better place with.”
Complicated, yet Burton and Tomlinson have been going strong ever since. The couple welcomed their first child, Lucky, in November 2022, before welcoming a daughter, Flossie, in January 2025. The pair have been engaged since 2023. Both Burton and Tomlinson work as models and influencers, while Burton also runs a “luxury lifestyle and concierge service” called Twenty3club, which he set up in August 2021.
The service offers customers the chance to pay for bespoke packages to the 2026 World Cup, tickets to Luke Combs concerts, or curated holidays to destinations like Dubai, Hampshire and the Maldives.
