The QI presenter was saved by an intervening producer who walked into his hotel room whilst he was unconscious
National treasure and known bipolar-sufferer Stephen Fry apparently tried to take his life last year, with the everyman spiralling into a deep, seemingly inescapable depression whilst filming overseas. Downing a cocktail of vodka and pills whilst locked away in his hotel suite, it was only because of a intervention of one of his producers that the QI presenter was found and rescued.
Fry detailed his most recent attempt to take his life - having tried a various points in his life before, most famously during his 1995 breakdown when he fled to Belgium - during an on-stage interview with comic Richard Herring at the Leicester Square Theatre in London. He told the comic; "I am the victim of my own moods, more than most people are perhaps, in as much as I have a condition which requires me to take medication so that I don’t get either too hyper or too depressed to the point of suicide," going on to say, "It was a close run thing. I took a huge number of pills and a huge amount of vodka and the mixture of them made my body convulse so much that I broke four ribs, but I was still unconscious. And, fortunately, the producer I was filming with at the time came into the hotel room and I was found in a sort of unconscious state and taken back to England and looked after.”
The well-exposed television presenter, who has fronted exposés on the mental disorder in the past, also spoke of the anguish he feels during the filming of QI, despite the usually chirpy front he has on when the cameras are rolling. “There are times when I’m doing QI and I’m going, ‘ha ha, yeah, yeah’ and inside I’m going, ‘I want to f****** die. I want to f****** die.’”
The 55-year-old is always honest and open when it comes to his mental disorder and serves as the president of Mind, the charity aimed at raising awareness of mental health. As he explained his role to the audience and Herring, he discussed how he sees his role should work, and that is with frank honesty about his own disorder so that others can feel safe enough to come forward with their own. He went on to explain how the stigma often attached to mental health issues needs to be removed from society, and that even a super-genius like himself cannot explain the sudden mood shifts he and many others feel on a regular basis. He said, “If there were any reasons for it, you could reason someone out of it, and you could tell them why they shouldn’t take their own life."
Fry's discussion with Herring was part of the comedian's weekly podcast series at the theatre, and is available to download from the iTunes Store this week.
Stephen is open with his illness
We wish him all the best!
Lady Susan has a reputation that precedes her. She's a professional flirt who men flock...
Acclaimed filmmaker Whit Stillman reunites the stars of his 1998 drama The Last Days of...
This much more light-hearted sequel reinvigorates the franchise after Disney's quirky but murky 2010 reboot...
As Alice is once again taken into the magical and mysterious world that she's somehow...
Alice once again returns to Wonderland and meets a lot of familiar faces. This time...
With a baby on the way, Damon Gameau has decided to experiment with just how...
With wittier action and a few more sharply defined characters, this second episode in Peter...
Bilbo Baggins has narrowly escaped several deadly confrontations with the likes of trolls, stone giants...
Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf and their company thirteen dwarves have managed to leave the Misty Mountains...
Michael Winterbottom vividly recreates swinging 1960s London in this biopic about one of Soho's most...