Western Daily Press (Saturday)
‘How sweets as a child led to my drug addiction’
STEPHEN Fry has said his “addictive impulse” started with sweets as a child and developed into a cocaine addiction.
The actor and comedian, 66, has been open about his struggles with drugs and mental health issues in the past.
Fry told John Cleese’s The Dinosaur Hour: “When I was a teenager, I had this vast empty hole in me that said ‘Feed me, I need this sugar, I need it’.
“When it wasn’t sugar, it became tobacco, so I smoked and then in my 20s it became cocaine. I just couldn’t sit still. It’s that addictive impulse.”
He also cited TV adverts for sugary cereals and other food, along with his boarding school’s tuckshop having sherbet, as the reason he had the opportunity to develop the addiction.
Fry added: “They (the tuckshop) even, extraordinarily, had ... rolling tobacco, which was coconut shreds, but it was done exactly like a rolling tobacco packet.
“You would have a pipe made of liquorice and you would have cigarettes with red tips on the end, which were candy cigarettes.
“So, you were being prepared for cocaine and tobacco. Essentially you were given white powder and tobacco and I never could eat enough of that.
“I would break out of school and go to the village shop. I couldn’t eat them quickly enough.”
However, the former host of the popular quiz QI who was nominated for a 1999 Golden Globe for his performance in biopic Wilde, said his “addictive” personality does not extend to his relationship with alcohol.
Fry said: “I do like a drink, I like wine, but I know I could never be an alcoholic. I just don’t like it enough. I don’t like feeling sick.
“I don’t like having to cope with the responsibility of apologising the next day if I’ve been drunk. I don’t like the fact I might get a bit argumentative. So I could never be an alcoholic.”
Weston-super-Mare-born Fawlty Towers star Cleese debuted his new programme, filmed inside 12th-century Hedingham Castle in Essex, on GB News last month.