Jermaine Jackson 'had a year-long affair with Whitney Houston

Whitney Houston and Jermaine Jackson

Jermaine Jackson had a year-long affair with Whitney Houston, it has been claimed. The older brother of  Thriller singer Michael Jackson is said to have inspired the video for late singer Whitney's 1985 single Saving All My Love For You, which tells the story of a woman's romance with a married man, with the singer even hiring a lookalike of Jermaine for the footage.

And The Sun Sunday claim that while Jermaine and Whitney's affair ended after a year, the pair never lost touch - with Whitney comforting Jermaine following Michael's death in 2009. So when Whitney tragically lost her life last month, Jermaine was left grief-stricken by the passing of his close friend and alleged former lover. A source told the newspaper: 'Her death has devastated Jermaine because of the history between them. 

'No one understood the scale of his grief because they didn't know what they shared.' It is claimed that Jermaine and Whitney's affair began in 1984 when Jermaine was married to Hazel Gordy. And while Jermaine wrote about his friendship with Whitney in the HarperCollins book he released last year, You are Not Alone: Michael, Through A Brother's Eyes, he has never spoken about reported affair.

But in the tome he does write that he struggled with his feelings for Whitney, although put them aside for the sake of his marriage. He writes: 'As much as I wanted to lose myself in all these feelings, I told her to wait. Ultimately, we had to go our separate ways and it killed us both.' However, the source added to The Sun Sunday that Jermaine had deliberately left intimate details of his relationship with Whitney out of his book to make it sound as if they were just friends rather than lovers.

The source added: 'The reason it ended was because Jermaine wouldn't leave his wife - and Whitney was angry. The video for Saving All My Love For You was about all of that.' (Dailymail)