James Blunt refutes rumours he was Hayden Panettiere's 'yacht man'

James Blunt is putting a stop to rumours that he was the "undressed" and "very famous" man Hayden Panettiere found herself in bed with on a yacht when she was 18 years old.

In her memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning, Panettiere described the man as a "famous thirty-something British singer-songwriter", to whom she was "delivered".

On Monday, the You're Beautiful singer shared to X a link to a Substack article by journalist Dean Piper which seeks to debunk the speculation that Blunt is the unnamed man.

The piece, titled Hayden Panettiere and James Blunt, An Internet Lynching, notes that the timing is all wrong.

"It only takes the smallest of AI searches to find out that in May 2009, when pictures of Blunt and Panettiere were taken, she was 19, almost 20. So, if the incident happened when she was 18, Blunt's not your guy."

Piper also argues that Panettiere's story of the disturbing encounter, in which she fled from the room and hid somewhere else on the boat, doesn't match up with her and Blunt being seen together multiple times after the event.

"It takes nothing to work out that the cabin incident was the first and last time she met the man," he wrote. "So, pictures of Blunt and Panettiere together again mean only one thing: he's really not your man."

Panettiere died last Sunday of an apparent overdose. She was 36 years old.