Why I may commit suicide one day, by 'exhausted' Stephen Fry

Stress: Stephen Fry will discuss his battle with bipolar disorder

Stephen Fry finds the demands of fame ‘exhausting’ – and fears he may one day kill himself.

In a TV interview to be screened tonight, the 53-year-old broadcaster discusses his struggles with bipolar disorder.

‘The fact that I am lucky enough not to have it so seriously doesn’t mean I won’t one day kill myself – I may well,’ he says.



Fry came close to committing suicide in 1995 after walking out of the West End play Cell Mates, which had suffered poor reviews.



He fled Britain by ferry and was missing, feared dead, for a week before he resurfaced in Belgium.



He later revealed that he almost gassed himself in his car before escaping the country, but ‘I had this image of my parents staring right in at me... so I decided not to do it’.



In tonight’s interview, he laments: ‘It is exhausting knowing that most of the time the phone rings, most of the time there’s an email, most of the time there’s a letter, someone wants something of you. They want to touch the hem of the fame, not the hem of the person.



‘You resort to not travelling on the Tube or walking round the street any more and going in a big car with a driver.



‘And people think, “Oh, he thinks he’s so grand, doesn’t he?” Well, no. I’d rather walk, but sometimes I just can’t.

‘I feel I would love to close down for a number of years in some way and just be in the country making pork pies and chutneys and never have to poke my head out of the parapet.’



Fry dismisses claims that he intentionally adds to the commercial pressures he is under, defending his voiceover work on adverts.



He denies that jobs such as his voice campaigns for Twinings tea and Marks & Spencer are to make more money, asserting that he already has enough.



He says: ‘I will continue to do commercials because they are so enjoyable, not because of the money – because I don’t need the money – but because it is really wonderful.’

