A Celebrity Traitors star was left ‘minutes from death’ after taking cocaine at a wild party.
Stephen Fry became the fifth faithful to be banished at the roundtable on the BBC series following another dramatic episode on Thursday.
However, during the early 90s, the 68-year-old actor suffered a terrifying scare at a boozy gathering.
According to his Blackadder co-writer Ben Elton, Stephen was rushed to hospital in the back of a black cab after ‘whacking cocaine up his nose’.
Writing in his book, What Have I Done?, Ben explained how Stephen started to ‘wheeze’ after taking cocaine in London.
In pages that were obtained by The Mirror, Ben wrote how he was ‘dragging’ the presenter up the hospital steps before he informed medics he had taken the ‘scarily illegal Class A drug.’
He said: ‘He looked like a corpse – grey, translucent skin, seemingly no life left in his eyes, numerous tubes and wires attached to every part of him.
‘His breath sounded like a death rattle and I couldn’t imagine he was getting any oxygen into his lungs at all.’
‘It was then that the doctor told me that Stephen had been minutes away from suffering permanent brain damage.’
Stephen has previously documented his struggles with Bipolar disorder and how he vanished from London to prevent his own suicide at one point.
The actor said he was so depressed that if he hadn’t gone AWOL during the production of a play, he would have killed himself.
He explained: ‘My luck began to fizzle out. I just couldn’t take being in the play, or being in London.
‘I saw rows of newspaper headlines, “Fears for Fry” type thing. And I stared at it in complete disbelief. They all are worried that I’ve committed suicide. That’s the awful thing.
‘I can’t believe I worried people so much. When you feel you can’t go on, it’s not just a phase, it is a reality. And I would have killed myself if I didn’t have the option of disappearing.’
In 2023, Stephen alo claimed how gettinghooked on sugar as a child as a result of his ‘addictive impulse’ became a gateway to his later cocaine addiction, which he battled for more than 10 years.
Appearing on John Cleese’s GB News show, Stephen said: ‘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 twenties it became cocaine. I just couldn’t sit still. It’s that addictive impulse.’
In his 2014 autobiography, Stephen even revealed how he has taken cocaine at a host of respected institutions, including Buckingham Palace, the House of Lords, House of Commons and BBC Television Centre.
Metro has contacted Stephen representative for comment.
The Celebrity Traitors is available to watch on BBC iPlayer.
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