INXS singer living in car

ROCKERS INXS have sacked JD Fortune, the lead singer they recruited through a US reality show, with the star admitting fame drove him to drugs.

The singer, who was picked to front the group after winning the series Rockstar: INXS, said he was now broke and living in his car in native Canada after being dumped by the band at Hong Kong airport.

“I was in an airport at Hong Kong and literally got a handshake. They said, ‘Thank you very much’,” Fortune told Canada’s Entertainment Tonight.

“I found myself really alone because I had travelled with these guys for 23 months.

“I don’t know where I am going, from sofa to sofa, from night to night. I am trying to get through my life.”

Fortune – real name Jason Dean Bennison – said his departure could have had something to do with his cocaine use.

“It got as bad as it needed to be for me to numb out the fact that I knew this was going to come to a screeching halt,” he said.

Fortune was the latest singer to join INXS, filling the enormous void left by the death of Michael Hutchence in a Sydney hotel in 1997.

One-time INXS singer Jon Stevens famously lashed out at the band for enlisting Fortune through the TV show, warning his successor that he would be “raped and pillaged”.

Stevens, who spent three years touring with INXS but never recorded with them, advised Fortune to make sure he had a good lawyer.

“(The show’s) main objective is money, money and greed,” he said in 2005.

A spokeswoman for INXS said she could not comment on Fortune’s sacking, as did band member Kirk Pengilly’s fiancee Layne Beachley when contacted by Confidential.