I have a modest proposal that might simultaneously celebrate the life of Christopher Hitchens, strengthen Britain’s low stock in Europe and allow us to help a dear friend in terrible trouble.

Perhaps the most beautiful and famous monument in the world is the Doric masterpiece atop the citadel, or Acropolis, of Athens. It is called the Parthenon, the Virgin Temple dedicated to Pallas Athene, the goddess of wisdom who gave the Greek capital its name.

Parthenon - west side © A Sampson 2009

The Acropolis contains other temples and represents in the minds of scholars, historians and all who care about our past and the source of our civilisation, the pinnacle of Athens’s Golden Age under the leadership of Pericles; that period of peace between the wars against Persia which they won, and the wars against their neighbours Sparta, which they lost.

For students and lovers of architecture the Acropolis (over which I made a spectacular fool of myself some years ago) will always remain one of the most perfect examples of the Doric order ever constructed. The Romans and Arabians later added arches, ogees, domes, pendentives, barrelled vaults and squinches to the basic elements of architecture, but the Parthenon’s grace has never been surpassed. Its influence is all around us. Pillars, pilasters, porticos, pediments, architraves, entablatures, triglyphs and metopes may sound strange but we see them every day in high street buildings, town halls, 18^th century churches, squares and crescents. Some people who spot trains or birds are called sad. I am a sad corbel, buttress and apse spotter – one who loves that there is a name for everything in architecture, a full and rich anatomy.

© A Sampson 2009

Doric elements were not the only thing that came from Greece. 5^th century BC Athens was a city state that gave us Aristotle and his devising of logic, categories, ethics and poetics; Plato and Socrates led ceaseless quests for the discovery of the truth behind people, phenomena and politics. Their refusal to take as true any baseless, unprovable assertions made by priests, tyrants and hierarchs but instead to examine honestly from first principles took nearly two millennia to be rediscovered by the renaissance and then enlightenment philosophers who shaped our modern world very much with Periclean Athens in mind. Euclid and Archimedes are to this day heroes to all mathematicians and engineers. Their blend of rationalism and empiricism is at the heart of all science and sense. The sheer magnificent beauty of Euclidian geometric theorems and their proofs, has never, most mathematicians would agree, been surpassed.

The duty of Athenian citizens to play a part in justice through the tribunals on the Areopagus Hill was taken seriously, as was democracy in the form of regular voting: there was even an agreed assumption that theatre as a total art form that combined mask, dance, poetry, drama, history, music and religious ceremony was an essential element of public life and formed part of an open analysis of Athenian identity. As Nietzsche pointed out in his supreme The Birth of Tragedy, the Greek people had gone from tribal blood feuds, war and savagery to a peak of civilisation in a very short time indeed. Nietzsche chose the Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus as representatives of the two sides of the Greek (and of course all human) character. One part harmonious, reasonable, artistic, musical, mathematical and idealistic, the other consumed by appetite, lusts and loss of reason through desire, greed and ambition. Whether we call these Freud’s ego and id or Forster’s prose and the passion, which we must “only connect”, no civilisation I can think of seems so clearly to display through its art, rhetoric, philosophy and politics just what it is to be a human, a social and collective being, what Aristotle himself called in a phrase almost worn away by universal use, “a political animal”.

Of course we are not talking about an ideal society. Slavery, the subjugated role of women, open paederasty and xenophobia, helotry and harlotry – these are not things wholly in tune with the temper of our own times. Read E. R. Dodds’s masterly The Greeks and the Irrational and you will see they weren’t all algebraic geniuses with a bent for brilliant oratory and logical exposition. But Athenian education, open enquiry, democracy, justice and a harmony of form in sculpture and architecture were quite new to our world and indeed their ability to question themselves is one of the things for which we are most indebted to them.

We have them to thank for the Olympic Games too, and the next Olympiad of the modern age will of course be held in London in 2012, and very excited and pleased about that I am. Excited and pleased because I love sport and always and automatically want to line up on the opposite side of cynics, curmudgeons, wet-blankets, pessimists, and (literally in this case) spoilsports.

I am also excited and pleased because the occasion — the largest regular gathering human beings on the face of the planet — offers…

A) a remarkable opportunity to appease the dead spirit of the great Hitchens

B) to make up to some small degree for our recent devastating and pathetic humiliation in Europe

C) to redress a great wrong and

D) to express our solidarity with, affection for and belief in Greece and the ideals it gave us.

The Hellenic Republic today is in heart-rending turmoil, a humiliating sovereign debt crisis has brought Greece to the brink of absolute ruin. This proud, beautiful nation for which Byron laid down his life is in a condition much like the one for which he mourned when they were under the Ottoman yoke in the early nineteenth century, taking time off from the comic ironic tones of his ottava rima masterpiece Don Juan to insert this mournful threnody….

The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!

Where burning Sappho loved and sung,

Where grew the arts of war and peace,

Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung!

Eternal summer gilds them yet,

But all, except their sun, is set…

And where are they? And where art thou?

My country? On thy voiceless shore

The heroic lay is tuneless now—

The heroic bosom beats no more!

And must thy lyre, so long divine,

Degenerate into hands like mine?

‘Tis something, in the dearth of fame,

Though linked among a fettered race,

To feel at least a patriot’s shame,

Even as I sing, suffuse my face;

For what is left the poet here?

For Greeks a blush–for Greece a tear….

Two years ago a new and beautiful Acropolis museum was completed, allowing visitors a much more intelligent enlightening, captivating and informative journey through the history and meaning of the Acropolis than the rather rocky hillside rambles of the past.

View of the Acropolis (south) taken from the balcony of the museum. © A Sampson 2009

A year earlier, in 2008, the Italian and Greek Presidents had taken part in a ceremony in which a fragment of marble sculpture taken from Greece and left in Italy 200 years earlier was returned to Athens. This small fragment had been taken by the British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Lord Elgin.

The greater part of the haul was taken to England where they have been housed in the British Museum in London since 1816 under the now highly charged name of the Elgin Marbles. Even at the time plenty of Britons thought the Ottoman Empire’s granting permission to take so many elements of the Parthenon (and the stunning Erectheum, the temple with its famous caryatids further down the hill) away from their home and into London was little short of looting.

MARBLES

What has all this to do with Christopher Hitchens, polemicist, shamer of Clinton, Kissinger and Mother Teresa, champion of Orwell and Payne, scourge of tele-evangelists and mountebanks everywhere? Well, in 1997 Hitchens wrote a book called The Parthenon Marbles, the Case for Reunification. In it he lays out how, inspired by reading Colin MacInnes (of Absolute Beginners fame) on the subject, he threw himself into finding out more about the marbles and came to what he saw a frankly irrefutable case for their return.

Parthenon Marbles - west pediment. © A Sampson 2009

It was, as the author Simon Raven pointed out, the Greeks who maintained that anyone who tells you what happens to a person after they die is either a fool or a liar. The speculation over Hitchens’s soul’s fate has been as disgusting and degrading as the age of indulgences, sold pardons and chantry chapels, but comes as no surprise to anyone. His legacy however, his doctrine of decency, his war on bullies, tyrants, liars and frauds, now that can be honoured and it can be called, if you wanted to do so, his imperishable soul.

Arguments for keeping the Elgin Marbles in the BM usually boil down to:

A) If Elgin hadn’t appropriated them they would probably have rotted or crumbled away so we saved them and deserve to keep them

B) Once you go down the path of museums returning ransacked treasures to their countries of origin then all the great museums and galleries of the world will have their collections dispersed to the great detriment of scholarship, visitor access and common sense

C) Every year, more people see them in the British Museum than visit Athens, so to move them would be to reduce their availability to be seen.

Argument A is most peculiar. As Hitchens put it, if you rescue furniture from a neighbour’s fire and keep it for them while they rebuild their house you then give it back, you don’t claim rights over it. Hitchens points out in his book how gracious Greece has been about the whole affair. It was Melina Mercouri (at whose funeral he was a pall-bearer), the actress, singer and politician, who really got the campaign going and always conducted it, on her part, with great good grace.

The British Museum has been utterly intransigent over point B. “Over my dead body” appears to be the view of each successive Director. The current chief, Neil MacGregor has had a brilliant tenure but is quite as foursquare against the return of the marbles as his predecessors. It is axiomatic that no museum or gallery ever likes to de-acquire. “What next?” they cry. “Every mummy, every Babylonian pot, the Rosetta Stone? The Royal Game of Ur? The Madonna of the Rocks and Rembrandt’s self-portraits at the National? Cleopatra’s Needle?”

Well, the answer to that is NO. We are discussing a specific part of an existing building, which we now know can be properly and professionally curated and displayed. The argument “Oh, once you go down that path…” has never held water. The weirder kind of libertarians said it about seat belts. “Oh, once you make people wear seat belts it’ll be helmets and roll bars next…” that kind of drivel. “Once you ban hunting, they’ll ban fishing.” If you ban citizens from owning Uzi machine guns it doesn’t mean you’re “going down the path that will lead to the banning of shot-guns and peashooters. Get a grip everyone.

Humans have will. We can go down a path and then turn left or right, or turn right round. Legislature is, perforce, nuanced and (we trust) skilfully drafted precisely so as to introduce regulation with the minimum loss of wider rights and liberties. “Going down the path” of the return of the Elgin Marbles need not be fatefully precedential. We could decide to let it not be. Of course plenty of countries will seize their chance to have a go at demanding returns of this artefact or that, but this is happening anyway. The Parthenon affair is a special case. Italy returned their fragment two years ago and haven’t been badgered, bullied and ballyragged since.

Parthenon Marbles - east pediment. © A Sampson 2009

Greece made us. We owe them. They are ready for its return and have never needed such morale boosting achievement more. And it would be so graceful, so apt, so right.

As for Point C, visitor numbers, well that is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, not to mention a counsel of despair. As Kevin Costner almost said, ‘If you move it, they will come.”

Not everyone likes the new Acropolis museum it must be admitted: apparently its construction flattened the musician Vangelis’s charming house and the reinstalled friezes would, say some scholars, be hardly more ‘authentic’ in their new home than they are in Bloomsbury. But the stone quarried from Mount Pentelikon, the dazzling white pentelic marble from which the Parthenon is made, is for Greece what the marble of Carrara was for Michelangelo and it belongs in its homeland, it expresses it. There really is such a characteristic as terroir. Which is why something as disgusting as retsina tastes so delicious on a beach in Patmos and so horrific in a warm kitchen in Wincanton.

As it happens the British Prime Minister’s office and the Department of Culture , Media and Sport are, even as we speak, planning a ‘Great’ campaign in which they wish to show the world what is Great about Britain (in fact the Great is really of course is a geopolitical term, as in Greater Manchester, not a profession of superiority, but never mind). I am patriotic I think. I fact I know I am. And like most people who truly love their country, I don’t think it perfect but want it always to strive to be better, nobler, kinder, smarter. I want to be proud of it. Some will see the ‘Great’ campaign as a Ladybird Book version of Blair’s embarrassing Cool Britannia ‘initiative’ back in the 90s. A step back to a heritage museum Britain where we’re all the best of (Julian) Fellowes and grandeur parallels diversity, tolerance and innovation. I wish them well and offer this thought:

What greater gesture could be made to Greece in its time of appalling financial distress? An act of friendship, atonement and an expression of faith in the future of the cradle of democracy would be so, well just so damned classy. The City of London whose “interests” Cameron wishes to protect, but which independent observers say is now if anything less secure in its hegemony than ever before, has buildings in which people sit all day betting “against” Greece, or “taking positions” as they would rather put it. In other words they get home from the office happy in the thought that their transactions have hurled another thunderbolt into the land of Homer and Plato, Themistocles and Pindar. May they rot.

There is much talk of “repatriating powers” from Europe amongst Eurosceptic and even middle-of-the-road politicians. To repatriate a power takes treaties, rows, enmities, alliances and betrayals. To repatriate a collection of stolen marbles take good will, moral courage and a decisive belief that right can be done. Oh, and I suppose a Hercules transport aircraft or large ship. Rope, voiding, bungees, castors. That kind of thing. Bean-shaped foam too I shouldn’t wonder.

How can we British be proud until we sit down with Greek politicians and arrange for the return of their treasure? It would be a dignified, but a thrilling celebration. No need for head-hanging apology or anything silly, just a recognition that the time is now right. Remember that dipping of the head, that bow, made by the Queen to the fallen of Ireland on her last visit there? Symbols mean a great deal. If the Hulture Secretary, Jeremy … oh, you know who I mean … or the Prime Minister or his Desperate Deputy did have the grace and guts to make this gesture, perhaps at the opening of London 2012 and then following it up in Athens with a full reinstallation it will achieve many things: it might remind us of what we all owe Greece, it might encourage us to visit the country and spend a little tourist money on its ferries, islands, temples, attractions and dazzling beauty: those blue seas, the warmly hospitable people, the theatres, temples, statue, beaches and bottles of resinated Domestika.

Such a fine gesture might also help make the rest of Europe decide we are not always the perfidious Albion they have traditionally believed us to be. I believe we would gain far more than we lost. A simulacrum in plaster or resin could hang in the BM where the real ones now do and an series of photographs could display the process of the return and the history behind it.

I certainly wouldn’t rename them the Hitchens Marbles, Christopher would bridle and writhe at such a thought, but those who wanted to, might discover the part he played in this long struggle and know that he wasn’t all about trashing icons, vilifying statesmen or taunting faith-healers. He once defined an educated person as one who knows the limits of their knowledge. His own self-professed philhellenism stemmed as much from the great gift Greek civilisation had given him and has given all of us– the confidence to doubt, to reason and openly to question. To know how little we know. To be curious about ourselves.

It’s time we lost our marbles.

x Stephen Fry

It was a great surprise to receive a letter some months ago from Lord Bragg (he of unimpeachable Melvynous South Banksy fame) asking if I might consider taking over from him as President of the charity MIND. Only a few years ago MIND had paid me the great compliment of appointing me their 2007 mental health “Champion” so I was fully aware of the organisation and the fine work they did.

MIND, as you may or may not know is, in its (I should now say “our”) own words: “the leading mental health charity in England and Wales.” This is not to take away from SANE and the indefatigable Marjorie Wallace, or the work done by dozens, indeed hundreds, of smaller more locally based mental health charities up and down the country. I cannot bear it when charities, of all institutions, regard each other as rivals or even enemies. The superb Time to Change for example, is a result of cooperation across the sector. It also gave me great pleasure when this coalition government, for all that it is not my idea of the political dream team of the century (but which government ever was?) made good strides towards placing the issue of stigma front and centre with their initiative Shift.

The Secret Life…

So, why me? Well, as some of you may know, five years ago I made two one hour films for the BBC called “The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive,” in which I told the story of my own history of cyclothymia, Bipolar Disorder, manic depression – call it what you will. Some of those I met in the course of making the films told harrowing and extraordinary stories of their struggles living with this common, and commonly misunderstood, mood disorder.

Those films certainly did seem to have quite an effect. I can quite truthfully say nothing I had ever done before or have done since, has resulted in such a mailbag. It sometimes seemed that as many doctors as lay people were writing to thank me or to take issue with or expand upon some point made in the programmes. Ross Wilson, the producer/director and I were very gratified when we were awarded an International Emmy. I had the honour too of being made a Fellow of Cardiff University: Professor Nick Craddock there had undertaken what was then I think the world’s largest genetic study of bipolar disorder (warning, v scholarly!) and I was proud to accept the Fellowship as a way of showing my admiration for his team’s work and his university’s unstinting  support of it. The Royal College of Psychiatrists got me all flustered and proud too by appointing me an honorary fellow. The College’s campaign to encourage more talented medical students to choose psychiatry as a specialist study as they advance through their courses is immensely important. It seems that today’s medical student regards mental health as a less “sexy” branch of medicine in which to specialise than cardiology, say or oncology. I can only hope that this soon changes, for the advances being made in neurology, genetics, pharmacology and endocrinology show that, in fact, studying the physiology of the brain and the nature of the mind is just about the most exciting field there is in all medicine.

Polar Opposites

As with all mental illnesses, the problems posed for the person afflicted with bipolar disorder are often matched by the suffering, embarrassment, distress and indignity endured by those who live with and love them. On top of this, worst and most pernicious off all, is the stigma that goes with mental illness. It is bad enough to be afflicted by a condition that destroys the ability to find savour, pleasure, joy, energy, purpose or hope in life without being stared at, mocked or dismissed as some kind of freak, weirdo, social misfit or fraudulent hypochondriac.

The awful black feelings, it should be pointed out at once, are only half of bipolar disorder, a condition which deals its blows by swinging between a depressed mood of hopelessness and its polar opposite (hence the name) – an elevated mood of euphoric grandiosity, energy, self-belief and sometimes an embarrassing loss of social or sexual inhibition. It is is easy to think that these upswings are a kind of compensatory bonus that allow manic depressives to be more creative and artistic than other people. While it may be true that certain celebrated writers, painters, composers, statesmen, warriors and inventors have appeared (inasmuch as such retrospective diagnosis can safely be believed) to have been manic depressives, anyone who lives with a seriously bipolar person can tell you that the manic elevated mood is in fact harder to cope with than the black depressed one and that “creative” is not a word one would often use of it. This is not even to mention the “mixed” or “transitional” states that often combine the worst aspects of both extremes.

Let no one be under any illusions. At its most serious, bipolar disorder can be a very very serious condition. Its morbidity rate is high, often because it can typically trace a descent from social norms and supportive structures into homelessness, friendlessness and all the disastrous effects on physical health that poverty, addiction, social rejection and loneliness bring in their train.

Those who think manic depression is a “celebrity disorder” made up by tabloid cuties to excuse their excesses, addictions and descents into bad behaviour, should look at mental health’s most serious victims: the marginalised, the poor, the ethnically isolated, the lonely. They have no voice, save the jeers of stone and insult throwing louts, it is they who form the silent majority of sufferers.

Self Medication

It can be no surprise that so many with bipolar disorder, a condition over which they have no control, reach for something that can predictably lift or lower their mood at their bidding in their own time and under their own terms. Drugs and alcohol appear to offer at least that kind of relief. This is known in the trade as “self-medication” or amongst those without sympathy, imagination, sense or decency as “a feeble excuse for weakness” or “self-indulgent nonsense”. But just imagine how tempting it is to reach for a bottle or narcotic powder: the intensity and misery can be numbed and life can seem more bearable. At a cost, naturally: a financial cost, a social cost, a physiological cost, a cost that can lead to ruin. As with all addictions progressively more of the stuff is needed to produce the same effect until inevitably the substance abuse becomes the problem, masking the mood disorder beneath.

Which is not to say that all alcoholics or drug addicts are bipolar or that all with bipolar disorder succumb to substance abuse. The uncomfortable, as well as the miraculous, fact about the human mind is how it varies from individual to individual. The process of treatment can therefore be long and complicated. Finding the right balance of drugs, whether lithium salts, anti-psychotics, SSRIs or other kinds of treatment can be a very hit or miss heuristic process requiring great patience and classy, caring doctoring. Some patients would rather reject the chemical path and look for ways of using diet, exercise and talk-therapy. For some the condition is so bad that ECT is indicated. One of my best friends regularly goes to a clinic for doses of electroconvulsive therapy, a treatment looked on by many as a kind of horrific torture that isn’t even understood by those who administer it. This friend of mine is just about one of the most intelligent people I have ever met and she says, “I know. It ought to be wrong. But it works. It makes me feel better. I sometimes forget my own name, but it makes me happier. It’s the only thing that works.” For her. Lord knows, I’m not a doctor, and I don’t understand the brain or the mind anything like enough to presume to judge or know better than any other semi-informed individual, but if it works for her…. well then, it works for her. Which is not to say that it will work for you, for me or for others.

I’m lucky, but…

If I am to use my “name” such as it is, to bang the drum for the cause of increasing society’s understanding and awareness of mental health and its issues, it is important for me to make sure that it is understood that I do know how lucky I am. Lucky to have friends, money and a light enough version of manic depression to make it less likely for me to suffer from the worst excesses of the condition.

I won’t lie, however, and when asked as I occasionally am, I cannot pretend. There truly are days when what is known as “suicidal ideation” has consumed me and it has taken all the effort I have to keep me from choosing the exit door from which there is no return. When I have mentioned this in print or interview it has, quite naturally, distressed those close to me or those, knowing me or not, who care about my well-being. I realise this and also understand why people think it would be better for me to shut up about all that rubbish rather than appear to welter in the fancy exotic luxury of having an “interesting” condition. It is important for me, as much as for anybody else, to understand that while my particular mood disorder might be what Americans sometimes call “Bipolar Lite”, it is still enough of a potential threat to my very existence for me to be wary about dismissing my version of this chronic condition out of respect for those who have it much worse.

Chronicling the chronic…

For some reason the word “chronic” often has to be explained. It does not mean severe, though many chronic conditions can be exceptionally serious and indeed life-threatening. No, “chronic” means persistent over time, enduring, constant. Diabetes is a chronic condition, but measles is not. With measles, you contract it and then it is gone. It can sometimes be fatal, but is never chronic. Manic depression, in other words, is something you have to learn to live with. There are therapies which may help some people to function and function for the most part happily and well. Sometimes a talking therapy, sometimes pharmaceutical intervention helps. Many in the psychiatric profession would suggest that neither talking nor drug therapies are as good on their own as they can be when used together. Some talk therapies might involve long term analysis, others utilise the quicker and more practical fix offered by methodologies like Cognitive Behavourial Therapy, which does not presume to understand root causes, but instead can offer tools and strategies for coping.

Other forms of mental ill-health…

I have gone on at some length about bipolar disorder because it is the condition I have most attempted to grapple with and comprehend. But there are many kinds of mental health problem which eat away at the happiness and prosperity of our country. Issues of self-image, like the kinds of body dysmorphia that can lead to life-threatening eating disorders for example; then there is the rising incidence amongst the young of self-mutilation and other forms of self-harm, there are unipolar depression, schizophrenia, learning disabilities, ADHD, Tourette’s, obsessive compulsive disorders of various kinds; there is autism and Asperger’s and there are all manner of phobias, syndromes and conditions that society often finds it hard to separate from the personality and even the moral worth of the sufferer. It is not for me here to say that all behaviours, moods, reactions and attitudes are attributes of brain and nothing to do with character, personality and what we are used to thinking of as “goodness” and “wickedness” – but I think any reasonable person can accept that the brain as an organ and the neural networks within it are quite as likely to suffer dysfunction as the back, the heart or the kidneys.

Of course the less merciful will say, “ how convenient that makes it for every criminal to be able to plead this syndrome or that condition as an excuse for crime and anti-social behaviour.” I am not pretending that this is not a real problem facing courts, but it is one that has been thought about hard for many many years and forensic criteria are constantly being established, declassified or refined. The best known collection of these definitions is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the DSM, currently in its revised 4th edition, though soon to be reissued as the all new DSM 5. An unavoidably controversial publication, it seeks to distil current understanding of what is and what is not a “true” condition that passes empirical, rational testing in ways that everyone from a jury to an insurance company can agree upon or at least come close to understanding. In the forthcoming 5^th edition, or so it is rumoured, the word “spectrum” will no longer be used to describe various sorts of autism, but rather each kind will be given its own individual ascription. In the its early editions, homosexuality was characterised as a disease, so it can be seen that the DSM is very much a work in progress and a reflection as much of public mores as eternal medical verities.

Why me…?

If you are in the public eye there are often many calls upon your time and name. It is, quite literally, impossible to accede to every demand that comes one’s way, just in terms of patronage of societies or positions on their boards and committees, let alone agreeing to the numerous requests for public appearances, tweets, retweets and bloggings.

So I have to make choices. Many years ago I decided to devote time to the Terrence Higgins Trust, Europe’s largest HIV/AIDS charity and busier now than it has ever been. I had reason enough, with friends dying in the 1980s, to align myself there. I have had experiences on my travels with wildlife conservation that have made it natural to accept a position as Vice President of Fauna and Flora International. There are other causes close to my heart because of their connections to the part of the country I grew up in or the passions that I pursue. To that end I’ve already written about the pleasure I derive from being a trustee of the Royal Academy and a director of Norwich City Football Club and I felt no less pride when asked to take over from Lord Attenborough last year as Chairman of the Criterion Theatre, Piccadilly.

Just when I thought I had committed myself enough in all directions, along came the letter from Melvyn. He gave fifteen years of his life in service to MIND and they could have had no more passionate, purposeful or persuasive advocate. I was happy to accept therefore, giving only the warning that my life takes me all over the place and that I cannot ever pledge to be present at every board meeting or gathering that so busy and far-reaching an organisation as MIND is likely to want me at. They seem, thank goodness to understand that.

Not a poster child….

I hope too, that it is understood by others, that while I appreciate and recognise entirely why so many people email and tweet me about their own mental health issues it is a little difficult sometimes being considered the public face of an affliction like bipolar disorder. I felt proud to be able to make those programmes about it,  and I will continue when and where I can to try and address as much as anything the stigma and the lack of diagnosis that can make a hard condition harder, but it is not easy receiving so much mail, so much twitter traffic and having so many souls asking for advice, wondering how I am, seeking guidance on coping mechanisms for themselves or even requesting long distance diagnosis for themselves or others.

I sincerely do understand why people might want to, but in the end it’s a disorder that at its worst is very serious and which, when I am lucky enough to be stable, I’d rather not constantly be reminded about, quizzed about, nudged about. I know it’s foolish and ungracious to complain and I do understand why I am so commonly asked questions on the subject, even though it is a little like having lemon-juice dropped on a fresh cut.

Mental health is one of the last great taboos. I will do my best with MIND as they, along with others in the sector, fight hard against the injustice, ignorance, stigma and indifference which still threaten society’s own good mental health. Where I can use the example of my own experiences I naturally will, but not at the risk of driving myself to the brink…

For those with a problem …

I can only end with this plea. If you think you have a mental health problem, see a doctor. Don’t write to me, I really am not qualified! There are plenty of sites out there filled with advice and links to sites where you might find people with similar issues, MIND’s own site is as good a place to start as I know.

If you do see a doctor and feel they are fobbing you off, do not allow it or stand for it. Insist upon your right to see another physician. Explain your symptoms as clearly and as honestly as you can – in terms of yourself and how you feel, not in terms of how you think others see you or how the world may or may not view you. A doctor who does not listen, counsel and suggest an approach to treatment is not worthy of their licence. But I’m afraid to have to tell you that such is current state of medical science, a lot of the work will have to be done by you. There are no magic bullets, either in drug or any other form, and it is a long journey that may involve mood diaries, changes in diet, exercise and sleep patterns and all kinds of solutions that are harder than a pill, a powder or a pint.

Best of luck. It may not seem it, but there are millions out there like you and there are thousands who want to help you feel better about life and yourself. MIND is one such and as its new president, I welcome you.

No problem…?

If you are lucky enough to be in sound mental health, it is almost certain that you know someone who is not or that you are a concerned or caring person. No one else would have bothered to read this far. MIND could use your help in all kinds of ways. Don’t be shy…

With thanks for your forbearance

An open letter to all who despise sport and most especially football

My love of all kinds of sport surprises nobody more than myself. I do not think there has ever been a schoolboy with such overmastering contempt, fear, dread, loathing, and hatred for “games” – for sport, exercise, gymnastics and physical exertions of all or any kinds. Every day I would wake up with a sick jolt wondering just how I might get out of that day’s compulsory rugby, cricket, hockey, swimming or whatever foul healthy horror was due to be posted on the notice-board that morning. The catalogue of multiple lies, evasions, self-imposed asthma attacks and other examples at what Edwardian school fiction characterised as “lead-swinging”, malingering and “cutting”. All the acts of a cad, a swine, a rotter, an outsider and a beast.

This hatred, as is so often the way with extremism, was to be replaced with an almost equal and opposite love. But before I came round to sport, largely through watching cricket, I had always, even through my most indolent, fey, camp, furious and posturing anti-athletic phases, avidly scanned the back pages of newspapers to follow the fortunes of Norwich City Football Club.

I don’t know why this is. I came from a household that showed as much knowledge or interest in sport as hedgehogs show in embroidery. True, my mother had kept goal for England schoolgirls at hockey and my brother had shot for the school at Bisley, but beyond that the Fry household had as much interest or understanding of sport as a potato has of  Riemann’s zeta function. There was no contempt, just absolute indifference and incomprehension. But…

I have always had, to a frankly stupid degree, a deep sense of loyalty and connection. I came from East Anglia, therefore East Anglia was the best part of Britain. It was natural to me then that my heart would leap when it heard or saw the word “Norwich” on the national news. And the only time that could ever happen (this being a lifetime before Alan Partridge) was when the football scores were read or printed.

Welcome to Norwich...

The years passed and I found myself, much to my amazement, falling in love with all sports: most especially, it is true the sports that rude unthinking people will call “boring” in a crass way that is perhaps excusable in a 14 year old, but which is boorish and repellant coming from adults who should know better.

Golf. I could watch golf for ever. I adore it as a television spectacle, as a social pageant, as an art and a nail-chewing suspense drama.

Darts. There is no way adequately to describe my fascination with this game and its proponents, heritage, atmosphere and thrill. The heroes of darts from Bristow to Barneveld, from Jocky to the Power, are as totemic and heroic as the myrmidons of Achilles. Go on, laugh. It’s true.

Snooker. Merciful heavens, I love this game so much that I seriously considered giving up a year of my life to follow it, video camera in hand, to make a film called “A Year In Snooker”. Sadly, all my other commitments held me back, but it remains true that I would be infinitely more heart-flutteringly discombobulated at the prospect of meeting Ronnie O’Sullivan or even, bless him, Graeme Dott, than I would a compound of Mick Jagger, Eminem, Clint Eastwood and  Neil Armstrong. CJ from “The Eggheads” could certainly marmalise me in a head to head quiz on the subject but he could never claim to love the game more.

Indoor Bowls. I still yearn for the days when BBC2 showed the world championships of this wholly entrancing game. My hero was Ian Schuback, who – I am distressed to note – does not even merit a proper Wikipedia entry. Long afternoons of bliss would pass as Tony Allcock and Rochard Corsie battled it out before the cameras at Potter’s Leisure Centre. If the phone rang on such afternoons I would pick it up and hear without introduction, “Hughie Duff is drawing well to the head today…” and know that I was not alone. The great Peter Cook shared my passion.

Rugby. Never quite got into the northern code, although Colin Welland once kindly took me to a match. But Rugby Union can cause a spectator to stand and rip his vocal cords to shreds like no other game. Its peaks of excitement are higher and more intense than you will find in any other. The offsides, infringements, rulings and strategies are all but incomprehensible, but the blend of brute force, balance, speed, wit and stamina that the game demands cannot be matched in any other than I know.

Cricket. The greatest love of all. With love so great one is robbed of speech. That cricket is manifestly the greatest game that humankind ever devised is, for those who understand the game, too obvious to mention but we are all too wearily used to others dismissing it as boring, incomprehensible – elitist even. Nothing worth the pursuit was ever easy or obvious. But all this is bringing me on to …

Football. Our national game. The beautiful game. And so on. There’s so much wrong with it. The corporations and holding companies who own the clubs. Their obsession with European silverware. The stinkingly vast sums paid out by broadcasters. The vast gap between the oligarchic haves and the deprived have-nots. I cannot imagine how distressing it must be if you are a Manchester United or Arsenal fan – the need to win, the expectation, the disappointment, the humiliation if you do not.

If you have always found yourself immune to the national obsession with Association Football, I can quite understand it. But all I would say is that, for all that is wrong with it, there can be no keener pleasure than belonging, adhering, following and obsessing with one club: scrabbling for the latest news, checking with terror the tables to see how far they are from relegation and despair. The club can be Chelsea if you have reason for it to be. It can also be Gillingham or Port Vale, York City or Newcastle. If you already have a club that you support, then you don’t need read any further. But let’s suppose that you don’t support any club, or that you have one great allegiance and are interested in the possibility of having a deuxième cru, a second house. Well, if you have a spare sense of loyalty going, an impulse to follow without a special connection, then let me suggest that you find a delightful underdog to cheer on…

Let me, in short, argue that you simply could not choose a more loveable and worthy club than Norwich City. They represent a whole region, one great medieval city lost in the rural vastness of Norfolk. Once among the two or three greatest towns of England, Norwich has almost comically lost itself in provincial isolation while the industrial cities of the North and MIdlands, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Birmingham, Stoke and Wolverhampton, and the powerful metropolitan districts, Arsenal, Tottenham, Chelsea, Queen’s Park and Fulham have overtaken the game with their colossal financial and media reach.

Norwich is a pigmy compared to these enormous, illustrious and opulent institutions. That is what makes being a fan such a pleasure. We don’t expect to win every match – when we do we jump up and down with joy and when we lose we smile ruefully as we expected nothing more.

The Canaries have had their moments of glory, what we would call glory at least, but it is a long time since 1992-93, the premiership’s inaugural season for the majority of which City led the table and achieved that unbelievable 1993 victory over Bayern Munich (“this is fantasy football,” John Motson said) There has never been much grand silverware on display in the club’s cabinet but what of that? Jeremy Goss’s immortal goal, Delia Smith and her husband’s extraordinary financial and personal commitment to the club (and yes, that ‘Let’s Be Having You’ moment) and last year’s thrilling last minute promotion are enough if you are a Norwich fan. Should we survive the EPL this season that will be a triumph. If Arsenal or Chelsea fail to snaffle one of the great trophies it will be a disaster for them. What a difference.

More than anything else, Norwich represents one of the few local community clubs left in football: for all that it only rarely has a chance to dine at the top table this is reason enough to celebrate its small victories. When Norwich does get elevated, it is managed through close links with its region and the passion and commitment of its players and fans. Our achievement of second place in the Championship last year sparked a grand celebration, bus-top processions, banners, bunting and civic pride everywhere. There was hardly a shop in Norwich that didn’t brandish the green and yellow. I happened to visit BBC TV centre around that time, just a few hundred yards from Loftus Road, the HQ of the Championship Champions. To take nothing away from QPR fans, there was nowhere for them to process, no bursting out of pride, no reason for locals to stop and hug each other as they did in Norwich.

Paul Lambert, our astonishingly gifted manager (one of how many premiership Glaswegians is it now?) has overseen only the second double promotion – from first to championship, from championship to top flight – in history, yet everyone is predicting that it will inevitably be Norwich who do the fateful yoyo and find themselves kicked out at season’s end. Well, we shall see.

There was no prouder moment for me than when I was asked to join Norwich’s board of directors. I can bring neither football nor financial expertise to the table, but I can bring that element of loyalty, devotion and local passion that I hope and believe is a great part of what makes football the most popular game on earth.

Should you, I repeat, have a spare shred of unattached allegiance in you, then why not affix it to the club that has the oldest song in footballing history?

On the ball, City, never mind the danger,

Steady on, now’s your chance,

Hurrah! We’ve scored a goal.

x Stephen

I owe a lot to the form. It was the almost unbelievably fortunate circumstance of being asked while still in my 20s to update the book of Me and My Girl that gave me financial independence. “Book”, incidentally, is the jargon term for the written bits of a show that aren’t music or lyrics: the story and dialogue, in other words.

There are plenty who seem to feel that musicals are a low art form, something for the ignorant masses not to be uttered in the same breath as legitimate theatre, opera or ballet. Nor indeed, the same people would have us believe, are songs from the shows comparable in quality, authenticity or artistry to rock and roll, jazz, blues, hip hop and other popular modes. The songbooks of Porter, Berlin, Gershwin, Kern and early Richard Rodgers might be excluded from this anathema because their connection to staged musical comedy is all but forgotten and their songs can be accorded the status of swing and jazz standards.

Many still wrinkle their noses when they consider how much of the West End is given over to cheap, tinselly shows whose appeal is chiefly to either the matronly less-educated end of the coach-party theatregoing populace or to hysterically camp aficionados for whom Sondheim and Fosse are immortals and Judy and Liza and Barbra divinities.

Well, I won’t say I ever reacted against musicals quite so strongly as that, but I must confess that I have spent a large part of my life thinking that perhaps they just weren’t my kind of thing. Ingratitude, given how much Me and My Girl did for me, but – as I say – all that has changed.

Over the past few months I have been enchanted by Legally Blonde and Avenue Q, as well as by smaller shows like Departure Lounge and Ordinary Days. The other week I attended a cabaret of songs written by the brilliant young Scottish composer/lyricist Michael Bruce, whose Portrait of a Princess has been such a YouTube hit lately and the week before last I found myself simply blown away by Betty Blue Eyes at the Novello Theatre, a brilliant adaptation of Alan Bennett’s multi-BAFTA winning 1984 film A Private Function. Building on the best of Bennett but with the addition of dazzling lyrics by Anthony Drewe and fabulously hummable tunes from George Stiles, Betty Blue Eyes delivers as deliciously happy an evening as anyone could dream of. Continuing the tradition of great theatre directors collaborating on modern British musicals, BBE is directed by Sir Richard Eyre, who should be knighted all over again for best-ever-use-of-a-pig on stage. That radiant Betty is certainly worth the ticket price alone, but if you add Sarah Lancashire, Reece Shearsmith, Adrian Scarborough, David Bamber, Anne Emery… well.

So excited have I become by my new found enthusiasm for musicals that I’m even hosting an evening on Sunday 10^th April at the Criterion Theatre, Piccadilly called “The Great British Musical”, a celebration of past, present and future shows. Some of the very finest of our country’s performers will be there, from Alfie Boe to Julie Atherton. You will be happy to know that I have agreed not to sing a note or dance a step. The evening is in aid of Perfect Pitch whose whose raison d’être is the encouragement, fostering, development and production of new British musicals. Tickets may or may not be available by following this link.

So what is it about musicals that has recently lit my fire, floated my boat and wowsered my trousers? We imagine that musicals are all about escape, fantasy, romance and comedy. Well, it would be absurd to deny that they don’t deliver those much needed and highly prized rewards and that this surely would be reason enough to thank them. But for me as much as anything an evening at the musical theatre is a celebration of talent. It simply astonishes me, indeed often moves me to tears, how many men and women we have in this country who devote themselves body and soul to our entertainment. Eight times a week for months on end there are boys and girls out there doing things that I could never do. They earn a living wage, but really not much more. Only the known stars (often television stars lately translated to the stage) earn big money. The choreographers, musical directors, dance captains, musicians, company managers, administrators, directors and producers are devoted and dedicated practitioners of an art that matters. I love opera with a huge passion, but sometimes my soul yearns more for that easy transition from natural speech to song, that contemporaneity, the wit, the pizazz and the glamorous hoopla that only a great musical can provide. I know that teachers, nurses, soldiers, bus-drivers and millions of others also throw themselves into their work with skill and devotion and that the singling out of a profession that many will think of as quite self-regarding enough already might annoy, but there we are.

Gay people supposedly love musicals more than others because they offer a glittering and colourful Emerald City that contrasts with the grim black and white reality of gay life. Well, that was once true, of course it was, but now it is no more true of a gay experience than of a straight one. We are all as likely to want to leap over the rainbow and follow the yellow brick road as each other.

I think it is time to take the snobbery out of theatre. I am convinced that as I write the West End is in a wonderful, an almost unprecendently wonderful, condition. The balance of important new plays, classic revivals and high quality musical shows old and new is just about perfect at the moment, but it would be less of a world class theatre district, less of a significant cultural phenomenon were it not for the health and vitality of the stage musical. With figures like Michael Bruce and Stiles and Drewe writing from within the tradition and geniuses like Tim Minchin breathing new life from outside it, I can only be confident about the future. If you haven’t recently, then – wherever you live – try and find time to “take in a show” as they used to say – I know it isn’t cheap, but I think you’ll find it worth every penny.

Gay Marriage

Something for George Osborne to consider

“Charlie Sheen can make a ‘porn family’, Kelsey Grammer can end a 15 year marriage over the phone, Larry King can be on divorce No. 9, Britney Spears had a 55 hour marriage, Jesse James & Tiger Woods, while married, were having sex with EV…ERYON­E. Yet, the idea of same-sex marriage is going to destroy the institutio­n of marriage? Really?” Don’t know who wrote that originally, but it’s on the web passim …

An open letter to @mobijack

Dear @mobijack

“Eat shit, a hundred billion flies can’t be wrong,” the old graffito used to say. “Follow Stephen, two million tweeters can’t be wrong,” I say.

Now, it so falls out that you are the two millionth person to follow me on Twitter. I do not know, cannot guess and have no business asking your reasons for doing so. It may be that you know who I am as a writer, broadcaster, actor and so on, it may be you have followed me on someone else’s recommendation or indeed it could simply be because you wanted to be the two millionth and timed it perfectly. I know that your name is Jonathan, that you live in Dundee (a city I love and of which I retain the fondest possible memories after six happy years of occupying the Rector’s chair at the University) and that you like BI, whatever that might be. Business Informatics, Wikipedia suggests.

© Tony Husband

It’s as possible that you are someone with a dozen Twitter IDs as it is that you are an absolute newcomer. Nonetheless I am going to assume that you are a relative newbie and use this occasion, ultimately adventitious and meaningless as it is, as an opportunity to tell you about Twitter, my relationship to it and feelings for and against it, after three years of stormy marriage to this extraordinary creature.

I first heard about Twitter a month or so after it had been launched on the world and with my usual perspicacity mentally consigned it to the dustbin of history. ‘What a simultaneously hysterical, banal, footling and useless idea,’ I remember thinking. Be honest Jonathan, you almost certainly thought the same when you first heard of it. Everyone does. Those with long memories will remember when people said exactly the same about email. “Don’t get it. What’s the point? Strictly for the geeks.” I remember trying to convince everyone I knew that email was a brilliant thing: my agent, my accountant, friends, the director general of the BBC – they all thought I was mad. I say this not to boast about my powers of prophecy and insight, for they are truly feeble as my original contempt for Twitter shows, but to remind us all that when technological breakthroughs and social game-changers come through, almost no one recognises them. The messiah gets just one John the Baptist for every hundred thousand stoners, jeerers and nay-sayers.

I have always been an early adopter, and many of the services to which I have ardently subscribed have come to nothing or are yet to take off, Buzz, Orkut,  FourSquare, Diaspora and Maphook spring to mind … one moribund, the other mostly Brazilian, the rest reasonably hot, but like bubbling under and waiting to erupt.

Facebook I joined enthusiastically in 2007, but soon realised that it wasn’t for me. Etiquette demands that messages be answered, that friend requests be attended to and the whole thing cultivated and cared for: I soon received too many requests for me to handle and disappeared into a secret squirrel FB identity that only my friends know and that, even if it were guessed at, is plugged too tight to penetrated, like a … well, provide your own simile, Jonathan.

The early days

Anyway, along came Twitter. It and I got along pretty happily for a while. I signed up in 2007 but didn’t use it for a year. On the 10^th of September 2008 I sent this earth-shattering communiqué:

Hello Twitterers. I’m About to fly to Africa for a new project and will be tweeting whilst I’m filming. By the time I landed in Nairobi I was astonished to find that I had gone from about 5,000 followers to 11,000. The more I tweeted the more I got. I returned to England for Christmas by now captivated by this extraordinarily simple and yet intriguingly subtle new toy. Twitpic had arrived and allowed the sharing of photos and Audioboo was around the corner but client apps were primitive by today’s standards. Nonetheless I was rapidly becoming addicted, fascinated and bewildered in turns.

© Tony Husband

About a week after I arrived I was at a party at the Paramount, a new club that had opened on the top three floors of Centre Point at the junction of Oxford Street, Tottenham Court Road and the Charing Cross Road – more or less on the site of the old St Giles rookery, eighteenth century London’s most notorious slum, whose gin houses were I suppose the equivalent of today’s crack kitchens. I digress. Been doing QI too long. Anyway, I get into the lift with my web and online partner Andrew Sampson: demigod, @sampsonian, and what should happen but the lift gets stuck. It was, as the cliché has it, but the work  of a moment for me to whip out my iPhone, photograph the five or six of us in the lift and tweet our predicament to my followers. Page after page of instant replies filled the screen of my phone and astonished my fellow captives.

For some unknowable reason that episode was a kind of tipping point for Twitter in the UK. Up until then the press had been either wary, contemptuous or ignorant of it, but the lift incident and the amazingly instant response of my followers provided just the kind of easily assimilable narrative that the press thrives on and brought Twitter to life in the minds of many readers.

A month or so after that I was a guest on the Jonathan Ross show, helping him off the naughty step after his twelve week suspension for his part in the Russell Brand/Andrew Sachs brouhaha. At the interview @wossy, by then a keen twitterer himself, asked me about “this here Twitter” and I explained it as best I could. The lift incident and the Jonathan Ross appearance caused a flurry of signings up in Britain and forever indelibly associated my name with Twitter’s in the minds of some members of the press and public. This was amusing to begin with but soon became a thundering bore for all concerned. Every interviewer or journalist I met for months asked me about Twitter and then every newspaper, quite understandably, wondered why I wouldn’t shut up about it.

Twiiter has hardened my heart

With a great following comes great responsibility. It is not hard to see why so many people with goods and services to sell, charities and deserving causes to promote and ideas to disseminate want to piggy-back on the shoulders of those who can guarantee them eyeballs, web traffic and mouseclicks.

For the last two and half years, as the number of my followers has increased, so has the number of messages and emails I daily receive begging me to tweet or retweet on behalf of something or other. I occasionally comply. I wish I always could, but I do not think my two million would be very entertained by my filling their twitterspace with endless charitable messages, no matter how deserving. If my presence on twitter were to become no more than a kind of worthy parish noticeboard, I would be deserted in droves.

Ah, and you fear being deserted, do you? Well, I try hard not to make Twitter a contest. I am not in it for bragging rights and kudos (honest), but I am human and I would be odd if I didn’t get a glow from having so many followers. On the other hand…

Twitter is a social service, but it has hardened my heart. I have to be deaf to so many hundreds of entreaties a day, I have to bite my tongue and stay my hand when goaded, I have to attempt gently to dissuade the more needy amongst my followers to stand off a little and let me have air.

The secret of twitter, or at least the secret for me, lies in coping with the trade-off between the need for the sensible management of twitter and the need to try as hard as possible to be me, actually me, not a public image, not an image-massaged celebrity, not an on-display simulacrum, but the “real” me, warts and all.

Sometimes those warts show horribly. I can be in a bad mood – I have surely bored the nation enough on the subject of my mood disorder – and I become absurdly oversensitive and vulnerable to slight, insult and offence in low moods. When cheerful I can take the whoppingest and meanest abuse in my happily loping stride. But when I’m down it’s like a kind of photosensitivity, the hurt is horrible.

These are the moments when I get myself into trouble by instantly firing back at any negative tweet I happen to see aimed in my direction. I miss 99% of them (do the maths, the chances of my seeing any given tweet are very, very small) but some do get through. Naturally it makes me look like the worst kind of pillock when I respond angrily. “All he wants is adoration and praise, he can’t take criticism” is the perfect reasonable conclusion that might be arrived at. They do not know how many times I have seen incredibly rude insults and not bothered to reply, or have done so in joshing merry fashion.

I learn, but have learned slowly. I was like a puppy running endlessly into a mirror in the early days, now I’m more like a suspiciously growling hound. A pity, perhaps, but inevitable.

I’m an optimist and tend to believe the best in people, but there are unquestionably some grotesque and vile figures out there. If ever you have the misfortune to meet one, Jonathan, never ever be afraid to use Twitter’s block option. You won’t see their tweets and they won’t see yours. There’s nothing they can do about it and you will be happier as a result, infinitely happier. It’s what I do to newspapers and to those who want to upset or provoke me. No matter who you are no one has a right to see your tweets, a right to be followed or a right to address you if you don’t want to be addressed.

These days if you’re a celebrity you will often find yourself followed in the street by amateur paparazzi. Any kid with a decent camera can be such a creature. They hope you’ll go into a porn theatre of course, or be seen with someone inappropriate or doing something dodgy. Failing that they really, really hope that you’ll become pissed off at their wasp-like presence, the boredom, the impertinence and the unkindness of being stalked and that as a result you’ll turn and remonstrate. *SNAP* – that’s the picture they want, you looking cross, sticking up a finger, your face contorted with rage. Even better if you hurl their camera to the pavement. A lawsuit! Well, as in life so online. There are twitter stalkers like that. One soon learns to spot and to block them. One obvious clue is that they only seem to follow, and publicly to tweet, “celebrities”.

And yet…

And yet it’s mostly wonderful here, Jonathan. The majority, the great majority of people are friendly, forgiving and kind. It is a miracle that so much can be read into little messages of 140 characters that offer no personal clues by way of handwriting, styling or formatting. After a while you will be astonished by how perceptively your moods and meanings are interpreted and with what bewildering accuracy. You will be astonished too by the wit. The speediness, elegance and brilliance of some twitterers regularly takes my breath away.

Of course there are dimwits who will ask a question rather than Google or look back up the timeline. Well, maybe they aren’t dimwits but opportunists. A certain kind of person will always end their tweet with a question in the hope of getting a reply.

I like replying, I like being involved in twitter. If I’m raw from a recent mauling I’ll stay away and feel shy and nervous of looking at any single tweet or DM, either because they’ll be upsettingly sympathetic and concerned or because they’ll be mean. But mostly Twitter and my two million followers are as good a reason as I know to trust people. To respect people. To believe in people.

Welcome, Jonathan, and enjoy.

*hug*

I suppose the keenest disappointment I feel about the past week and the almost incredible weirdnesses it has brought in its train is the idea that there are people out there who actually swallow the notion that I am so stupid as to believe that women don’t enjoy sex. That I not only believe it but that I am dense, dotty and suicidally deluded enough to make a public declaration of such a crazed belief.

Let me now come out and say before we go any further that I entertain no such notion. Much as you may wish to think me a compound of the most misogynistic, ignorant, sexist and antediluvian pig who ever trod the planet I can truly report that I know and love enough women to be quite assured of the fact that women do indeed enjoy sex. I would have to ignore evolution, precedent, personal experience and the empirical observation of vibrator sales and teenage pregnancies and all kinds of obvious and unavoidable facts in between to believe anything else. And yet the public perception appears to be that I have made a statement that proves I think otherwise. Any number of self-righteous, indignant and contemptuous figures have (if I have understood aright) come out to condemn me for opinions that I have never even held. I say “if I have understood aright” because I have not read a single newspaper article on this whole issue and I may well have got hold of the wrong end of the whole silly stick. I am going by the maddeningly well-meaning but wholly unwanted information given to me by others.

But I repeat: it is not the fury, the insult, the hysteria, the tut-tutting, the head-shaking or indeed the intemperate abuse that has apparently come from some quarters, none of those have astonished me so much as the disappointingly wholesale acceptance by so many individuals that I might genuinely have been such a twatty prune as ever to have meant such a bizarre thing. Many people have by turns condemned me or sympathised with me or even agreed with me, but very few have had the perception or necessary understanding of the British press and its ways to get the obvious point that, guilty of all kinds of crimes as I may be, I am happily guiltless of the mad crime of thinking that women don’t enjoy sex. But I dare say I shall now go to my grave being thought of as someone who does hold such a belief, much as I will go to that grave being thought of someone who “attacked” the Pope prior to his UK visit, although I never did any such thing – indeed I went out of my way to avoid attacking him.

How can we unpick this whole sorry business? It may be that you haven’t the faintest idea what I’m talking about. So we should begin by telling the story of Stephen and Women and Sex, such as I understand it. Here goes.

How it happened

For reasons that should be obvious now if they weren’t before, I don’t give print interviews. I never consent to them any more than you, dear reader, would voluntarily consent to being mugged, raped or burgled, but when under pressure I will compromise by agreeing to do a profile for some small magazine or other. I say “under pressure” because as an actor, writer and presenter, publicity duties routinely go with my profession. It is written into contracts that if I accept a TV, film or writing job that I must agree to a “reasonable” number of press requests. Because I am fortunate enough to be a busy soul there will be periods when three, four, five or six different projects will come to fruition all at the same time and I will have to sit down with the publicity people from each project and barter. I will agree to radio, online and TV interviews and then, heart in mouth, consent to one or two local or specialised print organs.

You may not believe this from my hideous omnipresence but my preferred number of publicity assignments is exactly zero. If I could get away with NO radio interviews, NO magazine profiles, NO television chat shows, NO bookshop signings, NO stage events then I would. All those who know me and work with me will confirm this. I am a very very reluctant mule when it comes to these awful moments of necessary negotiation with the publicity people attached to books and films and TV series. “Must I?”, “Oh god please let me off…”, “Surely I’m don’t need to do this?” I am as aware as you and as aware as the battalions of people who clearly loathe the sight and sound of me that my media presence can appear to be ubiquitous, overexposed and entirely de trop.

This year has been one where, whether I like or not, I have been hugely in the public gaze. A big book, goodness knows how many TV programmes and a slew of concatenating public appearances have combined to make me look like a publicity hungry media whore of the worst kind. My god have I been aware of that. Well I shan’t overdo it. If you combine the lecturing and appearing and speaking and chat-showing and launches and lunches and award ceremonies and everything else you get a severe case of Too Much Fry. I have a strong suspicion that even my mother thinks there’s a superfluity of Stephen. And who can blame anyone for wishing I wouldn’t pop up quite so much?

So, to return to the business of Women and Sex. I kept to my rule and consented to no print interviews earlier this year when my book came out. I did however agree to do one profile for a small gay glossy called Attitude. I thought it was a harmless way of supporting a specialist periodical. The fact is, and there are witnesses to it, I only agreed out of kindness. What an idiot I am. A misplaced sense of community spirit that went ludicrously awry…

The Hippo with Attitude

Anyway, I did a photo-shoot for the magazine, during which and after which I conversed with a profiler. I can’t remember his name and I haven’t actually read the article he wrote as a result. They sent me three copies of the magazine and I looked at the photo on the front cover and now the magazines lie piled up somewhere. However vain, smug and self-worshipping you may think me, and I’m aware that many think me a revolting compound of all those things, I can promise you that I almost never watch the programmes I make nor do I read articles about me or interviews that I’ve given. Nor would you if you were me. Well, I chatted to this fellow on the day; he seemed very nice and very charming and we had a pleasant, relaxed and easy conversation. That’s the word, a conversation. I remember very little of it, but I can picture the narrow little room in which the latter part of it took place. At some point we chatted about gay sexuality – well, you would wouldn’t you, for a gay magazine? – and as part of that conversation I repeated the old canard about how men, unlike women, were cursed with their uniquely pressing and annoying libidos. Straight men I have known have often (of course mostly in a kind of bitter jest) said how much they envied gay people the simplicity of their erotic lifestyles (cottaging and cruising and so on) and I vamped for a while on that theme. I do not believe it as some kind of eternal gender truth, I was simply taking a thought for a walk, I was “playing gracefully with ideas” to repeat Oscar’s great phrase, or at least attempting to do so. But the important thing to remember is that the subject was not straight female sexuality, but gay male sexuality. It’s the only sexuality of which I have direct experience and how could I presume to speak of any other?

Was it naïve in me that it never for a second crossed my mind that this conversation would be sold on to other papers? That it would be “picked up” and make a disastrous move from being a conversation to some kind of public “declaration”? “Stephen Fry declares that women don’t enjoy sex.” It was as if I had called a press conference in order to give the world the benefit of my wisdom. For heaven’s arsing sake. Aside from anything else, the whole exchange was a steal from a book I wrote almost twenty years ago called The Hippopotamus in which a rancid, cantankerous old poet called Ted Wallace (loosely based on a compendium of Simon Gray, Kingsley Amis, John Osborne and others) bewails his inability to get his end away as easily as his gay friends appear to and so goes on about how women don’t really have the same urges as men. That was the whole point, it was a comic silliness aimed at a gay readership.

Ill-judged

At a time when morale is low in the gay community (a chronic rise in homophobia, teenage suicides, gay bashing and religious intolerance) I thought it worth making the light enough point that in some ways you could see the male gay life as a lot easier than the male straight life. But to read anything more into it than that is either wilful or stupid. I know that women enjoy sex. If women also say (and I’m in no position to agree or disagree with them) that they have as equally insistent and urgent libidos as men then I have no doubt that must be true also. It is perhaps sad to think that they are as pathetically in the grip of a base and humiliating need to get their rocks off as men are, but if that is the case then that is the case and god knows I’m no expert on the subject and have no right either to confirm or deny the proposition. It simply isn’t my business to pronounce on something that I know nothing of and I’m sorry if the very idea of my even touching on the topic is deemed offensive, inappropriate and outrageous by authorities on gender issues, if such authorities exist. As a gay man, female sexuality is patently a closed book to me. I had fondly imagined that in a free and open society one might be allowed to play with such ideas in a reasonable spirit of debate, but it seems not. It seems that such a conversation was offensive, ignorant, arrogant … god knows what else. Ill-judged it most certainly was.

Spank me with a fly-whisk

You will perhaps say that after nearly 30 years in the public realm I should have known better than to allow myself to have a free-wheeling happy, explorative and silly conversation with any journalist. Maybe I should have guessed that the interviewer wanted not an interview but a story. I should have known that comic exaggeration, so much the chief mode of a humorist, can easily be made to look bad when wrenched from context and nailed up as a proclamation. I admit that I do have a sometimes disastrous tendency, when asked a question, to answer it, often jokingly, or in the interests of ventilating a new thought that has struck, or more or less as the mood takes me but certainly too much without any consideration of the possible consequences. I am not, after all, a politician who has to weigh every syllable and its chances of giving offence. Maybe I should be more aware that those who wish me ill are always likely to seize on such instances and use them as a fly-whisk with which to spank me.

What the Papals Say

The whole Pope business, you might argue, should have warned me plainly. I was one of dozens, scores almost, of signatories to a letter sent to the editor of a low-circulation serious newspaper which suggested (mildly enough I thought) that the pontiff, while welcome (the letter, which I had no hand in writing, used that word) to Britain should not perhaps have his visit paid for out of the public purse. Instead of letting such a letter drop like a flat cowpat onto an uncaring field of public indifference, the press decided to publicise it widely and shriekingly to turn it into a great scandal. For some reason they singled me out as the figure most responsible for it and before long I was Fry the anti-catholic, Fry the Pope-basher, Fry the atheistic hate-monger. Weird, worrying and barely sane.

Am I that important? Should a letter to the Guardian in which I was a fractional part have been talked up into a cause célèbre for which I was judged almost uniquely responsible? Should a gamesome conversation in Attitude magazine be blown up into a major controversy that occupies acres of print? Surely I’m just a writer and actor? Just a nobody whose opinion is worth no more than anyone else’s? Indeed isn’t that the whole thrust of the articles written deploring my sillinesses? Bloody luvvie, who does he think he is? Well, then, why publicise and bring my worthless opinions so sharply front and centre? They can’t have it both ways. They pick up otherwise ignored articles, fulminate against them and in doing so accuse me of pushing myself forward! If the mainstream media ignored the frankly insignificant articles in which I appear almost no one would hear of them. All they have to do is ignore me, instead of which they big up everything they can find which involves me and then follow up their irritation with outraged expressions of annoyance at how prevalent I am. Well they are the ones who make me prevalent. It’s all rather potty and in the end all one can do is giggle at such farcical nonsense.

Unread

Having said all this I have to repeat my confession. I have literally no idea what has been said about me over the past week. When I say that I do not read papers I mean it. For 12 years I have assiduously avoided them, the British ones at any rate. Occasionally I will see an article online, and during the Pope debacle I was sent jpeg images of a front page which alerted me to the besotted and obsessional problems that the Daily Mail in particular has with me and my existence.

I was made aware by wild flutterings in the Twitter dovecots and incessant sympathetic tweets earlier this week (before I hastily disengaged from the service in order to save myself from more unwelcome details), that the press had picked up on the Attitude article and that all kinds of figures had then expatiated on my lunacy and folly in different newspapers over the next few days. And that this was followed by other papers taking the opportunity to give me the damned good kicking that a swine like me so richly deserves.

You may wonder why I duck out of Twitter at such times: well it may seem pusillanimous but it’s really, as I have said, just to avoid being sympathised with or told about an article I would otherwise never have got wind of. I soon enough slink back and before long it’s as if nothing happened. Clears the air. Does good on all sides.

So how do I feel about it all? Well, these hullabaloos tend to follow an established pattern. First outrage, then hurt, next amusement and finally the whole thing is forgotten.

And what do I learn from it? Hm. That’s harder.

1. Never ever read any tweets or direct messages sent to you the moment you get wind of a media shit storm brewing
2. No more print interviews, Stephen. No matter how small and worthy the publication you can’t be trusted not to say something that will make you look a tit when reproduced elsewhere.
3. Pretend you’re a politician and only say things after weighing all the consequences and potential offence caused.

Let’s be honest, I’ll never stick to point 3. I’m probably doomed to lurch from embarrassing moment to embarrassing moment for the rest of my life. Heigh ho.

Fool Britannia

I write this on an aeroplane bearing me to Los Angeles for my annual date with the Britannias, BAFTA’s American award ceremony, an evening I’ve intermittently hosted over the last decade or so. I suppose there might be British print journalists on the BAFTA red carpet tonight and I suppose I might have to find a way to avoid saying something monumentally stupid that finds its way back to Britain. If that’s the case … don’t let me know. Agreed? Hurrah. We have a deal.

Sometimes I have to pinch myself. I am sitting on an aeroplane writing a blog which tries to reassure the world that I am quite aware that women enjoy sex. No one can say my life isn’t unpredictable, interesting and … well, Fryish…

xxx

Blogging down one’s thoughts can sometimes end in bogging them down. Political events, ideological disagreements, rants, apologies, defensive screeds and coverage of techno launches, political scandals and general media excitements have often been the meat, drink, potatoes, peanuts and popcorn of my blogging space, which is fine and well and high and dandy and adorable in its own way (one hopes) but it leaves little time for dilating on the subjects which really move and enliven me. So here is the first of a series of blogulosities in which I try and share a personal delight.

I shall begin with a passion that has been with me since … well, since I was young enough to look and wonder I suppose. Like many of my generation I was made a prisoner for life from an early age by the remarkable Ernst Gombrich, whose The Story of Art Pocket Edition is probably responsible for opening more eyes to painting and sculpture than any other book published in the English language. If you aren’t familiar with it, I am not sure there is any work I could recommend more highly. If you are on a Gombrich spree you might like also to get hold of his A Little History of the World, which will make you and any children you have handy writhe, ripple and froth with pleasure.

Since reading The Story of Art I have loved looking at pictures. At school I took History of Art (or ‘history o fart’ as I would write on my exercise books because I was exceedingly sophisticated and amusing) for A level and did seriously consider the subject for a degree either at one of the universities or perhaps the Courtauld Institute. The Courtauld, if you don’t know it, has a spectacular and woefully undersung gallery at Somerset House in London, which houses stunning impressionist and post-impressionist paintings, as well as owning perhaps the best art image collection in the world, the Witt Library.

When I was seventeen, on the run from the police and in possession of someone else’s credit cards (don’t ask, you’ll have to read Moab is My Washpot or The Fry Chronicles to know more. Many sensible people acquire both books and find that good luck and bedroom success attends them for ever afterwards. That may be a coincidence, but it seems unlikely) I would, pompous twazzock that I was, perch myself on a barstool in the American Bar of the Ritz Hotel and converse with the barman there, who happened to be an enthusiastic and highly knowledgeable amateur art historian. His bible was the three volume The economics of taste: The rise and fall of picture prices, 1760-1960 by Gerald Reitlinger and he would mix my Old Fashioneds, show me slides of paintings (he kept an enormous collection under the bar counter along with his maraschino cherries, orgeat and swizzle sticks) and preach the gospel of Reitlinger.

Looking at pictures

To stand in front of an artwork can cause bursts of excitement and surges of pleasure and thumps of intense feeling that are not unlike those an adolescent experiences when glimpsing someone who stirs desire in them. It pleases me that every year more and more people go into art galleries and museums to look at collections or special exhibitions. All over the country we are spectacularly blessed. Places that show photographs, sculptures, decorative objects, textiles, porcelain and paintings exist in almost every major town and city in Britain. Many are free and almost all offer good discounts for those who most need them.

For any of you plagued by memories of having to troop listlessly after your parents or school group leader as you were shepherded from one masterpiece to another and forced to listen to well-meaning but often confusing, stultifying or irrelevant explanations and interpretations from tour-guides and experts, I have nothing but sympathy. We have all been there. If that has put you off galleries and exhibitions in later life then you have the unimaginable pleasure ahead of discovering what it is like to look at pictures in your own time, at your own speed, just as you please. The beauty of art galleries when you are no longer in a tourist group or family is that you don’t have to go “round” – you can pop in to see just one room, or even just one painting. There are no rules and no “correct” way to look.

In a speech for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, which I published as a blog a month or so back, I talked about how deeply embarrassing and unsettling the whole business of confronting an artwork can be. How do we respond? What are we meant to know? Suppose there are such things as taste and judgment or necessary knowledge that other people have but I (or so I tell myself) don’t? Who is more pretentious, the one who praises the strange, the modern and the difficult or the one who loudly condemns them to show that he, for one, isn’t “fooled”? How can we rid ourselves of the kinds of self-consciousness that make us ask such silly questions in the first place?

We have all experienced embarrassment, self-consciousness and anxiety when looking at a piece of art. The word “art” is so overloaded anyway, burdened as it is with the highest metaphysical, aesthetic, cultural and social meanings over and above the general meaning of “paintings and sculptures and whatnot”. Few words, when given a capital letter, become so tendentious and vexing as Art.

I don’t want to overstate the “problem” of gallery visiting. We should forget all that and think of the pleasure that is to be had, the pleasure in feeding the eyes and brain with the colour and mass and weight, the emotional drama, wit and narrative, the excitement and the sheer beauty that only artists can offer. The first duty to art that we have is to trust our own responses. We should remember the suggestion Alan Bennett had that over the doorway of a great gallery should be written the words, “You don’t have to like everything…”

The Royal Academy, London

Two years ago I was touched and flattered to be asked to join the board of trustees of the Royal Academy, which has long been one of my very favourite places on earth to visit. Do you know it? The Academy was founded in 1768 and moved into Burlington House, its current Palladian home, about a hundred years after that. You enter a gateway on the north side of Piccadilly and a courtyard opens up, focussing on a central statue of the Academy’s founding president Joshua Reynolds, palette and brush in hand, although it is likely these days that the area will be dominated by whichever current exterior contemporary installation might be surrounding the old boy. You pass up some steps and into perhaps the most elegant and impressive viewing galleries and exhibition spaces in London.

Burlington House

What do I love about the RA? Well, the name is a clue. It is an academy. It is owned and run and governed, not by us trustees, but by the painters, sculptors and architects who make up its membership, from Gary Hume to Elizabeth Blackadder, from David Hockney to Tracy Emin, from Anish Kapoor to Norman Foster. But it is a true academy too: the RA Schools is the oldest art school in the country. Turner, Constable and Blake were taught there.

By virtue of its nature the Academy will always and by definition engage with, display and promote the works of living artists, but because it has the best rooms in the world and an unrivalled history of putting together exhibitions it will always be a place to come and see some of the most exquisite and extraordinary art objects the world can offer – in recent years previously unseen treasures from China, Turkey, Russia, the Middle East and, at the time of writing, Hungary. As it happens the Academy also owns and displays the only Michelangelo sculpture in Britain, alone worth the hundred yard walk from Piccadilly tube station… It’s called the Taddei Tondo, and is a kind of carved circular tablet of marble depicting the Madonna, the baby Jesus and the infant John the Baptist. It will make your heart skip a beat to think that someone can make such a thing armed with nothing more than a chisel…

Be a Friend

The Royal Academy is entirely independent, receiving not a penny of government funding. Much of its income is derived from its pioneering and hugely successful Friend’s scheme. I do not think there is a more pleasurable or fulfilling thing to be than a friend of the Royal Academy. Part of my purpose in writing this blog is to urge you to think of becoming one yourself, if you aren’t already. You can follow @royalacademy here on Twitter.

A Friend can go free and as many times as they want to any RA exhibition. They are invited to the exclusive previews, they receive a quarterly magazine and have access to the Friends’ Rooms, specially set aside places where you can sit and sip and be calm and collected right in the heart of London.

When the heart-stoppingly astonishing Anish Kapoor exhibition was wowing record crowds last year many people became Friends just in order to beat the queues and because they wanted to go again and again, taking friends and family along with them. I think the same will happen when the forthcoming Degas and Hockney exhibitions open.

If you feel that materialistic Christmas presents have become a bore: more plastic and packaging, more meaningless “luxury goods”, more trivial nonsense and senseless frippery, then you cannot imagine, in my opinion, of a better gift this year than a Friendship of the Royal Academy. Whether the lucky recipient of your present pops in for an hour when next in London’s West End or whether they make a special day of it, there really is no finer thing to have in your wallet or purse than a Friend’s card.

In case you think this is coming across as a heavy sell… well, it is. I am passionate about the Royal Academy and think it stands for all the very best in British cultural life. Goodness knows I love dozens and dozens of other museums and galleries too, but I believe that there is something special about the RA and I hope you will too. There is nowhere else like it on earth and, like so many great national institutions, it is perhaps undercelebrated. If you want to give the gift of academy friendship, all the details are here.

As a trustee I leave the true art expertise to the academicians and to Chief Executive Charles Saumarez Smith and his team. As for matters fiscal, financial and fiduciary – with these I am not to be trusted. I have never learned the trick of being able to read accounts. My eyes swim and all intelligence and cognitive ability deserts me. But if I can persuade any of you who are good enough to follow me to befriend this wonderful institution then I have done you a favour and at the same time helped a place I love to continue in its marvellous work.

x Stephen

Proudly wearing this badge today

Sometimes, I must confess, I can get a little hurt when that shrieky weaselly little bourgeois tabloid is mean to me, which I believe is very often. I don’t read it of course: like anyone of education or sense or moral decency I wouldn’t have such a purulent creepy production in the house. Nonetheless, by the osmosis of twitter and well-intentioned cabbies I sometimes get to hear of some spiteful snide remark or other and naturally I can be upset.

Daily Mail Hate Campaign

Today’s headline and the leader inside however actually made me genuinely guffaw and wriggle with delight. It is the final proof, if proof were needed, that the Daily Mail is not just actually wicked (intentionally, knowingly lying) but actually now quite, quite mad. In the name (it must suppose) of morality, spirituality, goodness, kindness, sweetness and honesty it intentionally, knowingly twists, distorts, misrepresents, smears and calumniates. Will their editor and subeditors go to heaven? Is god pleased with them? Have they done a good deed? Is this their advertisement for the religious way? To lie?

I can always be certain that I have done a good thing when out of all the descriptions they can choose, their leader writers select “quizmaster”. “What has this country come to,” they want to know, “when an egregious, self-satisfied quizmaster presumes to make moral pronouncements on a two thousand year old institution etc etc.”

As it happens I have spent many many more hours of my life as a writer and a journalist than as a “quizmaster”, yet, oddly enough, we don’t read the Mail coming up with: “What has this country come to when a journalist presumes to make moral pronouncements on a two thousand year old etc.?” Perhaps the Mail leader writer would be kind enough to explain to the world what qualifications are needed to allow one to express an opinion, or write a letter to a newspaper? What profession should one belong to and can we have a list of those which in fact disbar us from expressing one’s views?

I was one of 50 signatories to a letter that called into question the official state nature of the papal visit. I didn’t write the letter, but am proud to stand behind it and with my fellow signatories. Otherwise my “hate campaign”, as they well know, begins with the words, “I’ve no objection to the Pope coming to visit Britain, he is welcome to do so…” it is, as I go on to say, none of my business. I go out of my way to make it clear that I fully respect the desire of the pious, the faithful and the devout to welcome their spiritual father, their supreme Pontiff.

My only objection is that this be a State Visit. It hasn’t happened before and the Vatican is in no real sense a nation state. Visit the place: it takes fifty minutes to walk round. You don’t need a passport or visa to enter. It is a curlicue of history that makes this “absolute monarchy” (to quote the Holy See’s own website) a “country”. Under no reasonable or worthwhile definition does the Vatican match up to the old-established and widely accepted Montevideo protocols on statehood. So by all means come, but please don’t ask the British taxpayer (a figure whom the Daily Mail is usually so zealous to protect) to help foot the bill.

Believe me, there is no hate there. None whatever. The Mail knows this perfectly well.

On an entirely separate matter, one can of course seriously, maturely and with dignity and respect debate one’s belief in God, one’s trust or respect for the institution of the catholic church and any number of issues. In a civilised, open and free country one hopes that there will be more and more debates of such a nature. I took part in one myself for Intelligence Squared with Christopher Hitchins, opposing a motion proposed by Anne Widdecombe that “the Roman Catholic church is a force for good in the world”. It was a debate conducted according to the parliamentary rules that govern these proceedings. I was proud to have taken part in such an evident proof of the open and democratic nature of Britain. I would have been even if we hadn’t “won” the debate that evening.

The most laughable element of the Mail’s weird outburst today is the way that the paper wants its readers, whoever the poor darlings may be, to see agnosticism, atheism, humanism and secularism as ‘fashionable’ and ‘established’ and therefore to figure themselves as maverick outsiders storming the ramparts of the liberal establishment.Yeah, right.

Actually, that’s not true, the most laughable element is their outrage at the idea we signatories are not being very hospitable to a visitor from overseas.

Let us think for a moment about the richness of that before we vomit with laughter. The Daily Mail if you please, wagging its finger about kindness to visitors from overseas and hospitality to foreigners in our midst.

Maybe funnier even than that is the happy circumstance that the daily giveaway on the front page today is a DVD by that proud atheist David Attenborough, who recently revealed the hate-mail and threats he has received over the years from those who do not believe in Darwinian science.

Because I have a theological turn of mind, the people I feel most sorry for, and always have, are those who work for the paper. I have never met a Mail journalist whose first words weren’t an apology. “We’re not all Paul Dacre types….” they mournfully beg us to believe. Well, leave before it’s too late! Just imagine that there really is a St Peter to greet you after death. Suppose he asks what you did with your life, your mind, your heart, your whole being and your immortal soul and that you have to reply you that wrote for the Daily Mail. Wow!

If I am “pompous”, “egregious and self-satisfied”, all failings of mine that especially upset the poor leader-writer, it is because I have the right to that Hated By The Daily Mail badge. More than a CBE or honorary degree it tells me, and forgive my lack of modesty, that I am decent, clean, kind, thoughtful and honourable.

x Stephen

I shan’t burden you with too much gloopy English self-flagellating false modesty, but I will certainly understand if you already feel that you’ve had your fill of Fry. These publicity blitzes are all very distressing to persons of tone and sensitivity and you won’t be blamed for pulling up the duvet and waiting for the unpleasantness to pass.

You may wonder how I feel in all this. Do I feel elated? Self-important? Proud? Ashamed? Wind-tossed? Grandiose? Impotent? Slutty? Vain? I don’t know how, from your point of view, you might imagine I feel with such a full-on fortnight ahead so I shall try and examine my feelings and share them.

There is an element of excitement for me, certainly. I don’t think the idea of relaying a live evening to so many cinemas just for a book publishing event has been tried before. I always love new modes and methods. I like the fact that there are more formats of eBook, iBook, audiobook, App and traditional paper and ink than ever before. All that is pleasing and exciting.

It is exciting too to be talking to and meeting so many people in so many different ways, live on stage, in signings, through the mass media. After four months of sitting in a study staring at the screen in a solitary state it is always miraculous finally to see a book in print and to engage with people who are reading/have read or are about to read the thing one struggled with in lonely despair for so long.

I cannot deny that I am nervous. Nervous about the inevitable … what is the word? …. not backlash exactly, but, well, humans wouldn’t be human if they didn’t want to slap someone like me down. I know I would if I saw me popping up all over the place like this. It is inevitable that in interview I will repeat myself and that a particular observation or turn of phrase I come out with on the One Show will be heard again on Chris Moyles and read once more in some magazine, and people will think me cheap and lazy.

I will get very down if I accidentally read something snide and unpleasant, no matter how many times I comfort myself with all the usual nostrums – “It’s tomorrow’s fish and chips”, “no one pays attention” and so on. That’s just me and while I should be used to it by now, I wish I had some of the pachydermous indifference to criticism and unkindness possessed by others I know.

The most important thing is not even to think of self-pity or rawness or to succumb to vulnerable fits of super-sensitivity. I have to remind myself that it is a privilege and a wonder to be presented with such opportunities to address and meet so many people, to be propelled through such a life and to be accorded such experiences.

You may think it supremely unnecessary to have to remind myself of so obvious a truth. Perhaps this is one of the real dangers of life in the celebrity lane: it is human nature to accustom yourself to most things – poverty, riches, popularity, loneliness and all kinds of states in between. Most of you reading this are very very lucky. After all you’ve got a computer, or a mobile phone, the knowledge and the opportunity to use it and the ability to read. We’re all fantastically lucky, but I cannot deny that I am luckier than most and I do know that it is something close to a crime to forget it or to whine.

Life for me (I’ve said this before so forgive me if you’ve heard it), is – I cannot deny it – pretty much a picnic. As with most picnics there are the occasional wasps. The wasps and their aggravation and nuisance are real, no point denying that, but life is nonetheless a picnic. If I yowl from time to time when stung, that cannot take away the pleasure of the view, the goodies in the hamper and the charming company. Namely – you.

So, apologies if my presence is becoming all too much – I shall do my best to hide when Penguin’s publicity push is over – a new series of QI running for another 15 weeks notwithstanding. And if you are one of those who is kind enough to buy the book or to attend one of the events, thank you. If you are one who is annoyed that my tour has stayed so resolutely to the south of England and the metropolis, apologies … I will try and put that right next year. If you are annoyed because you can’t find the app or ebook in your local American or other store it is because of copyright laws. The book is published in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and other English speaking territories, but not the US. That’s not my law, I’m afraid, but somebody else’s!

Now. I must go. Have to do a phone interview…

x Stephen

Back from my travels. Jet-lag more or less out of my system. What a strange journey it has been. Let me tell you how it came about.

Book Fair and Opera House

It all began some months ago when my friend David Tang invited me to the Hong Kong Book Fair. He made the offer dazzlingly tempting. There is no one and nothing in Hong Kong David doesn’t know and he and his wife Lucy are legendary hosts. Nonetheless, so sunk in commitments and so guilt-laden in my work obsession am I that I strongly considered giving the event the go-by. The same week, however, I was asked by the Sydney Opera House if I might consider doing an “evening” there. I don’t really have “an evening” so I reckoned I would probably add this request too to my list of reluctant declinings-declinations-declinements. A sudden realisation, however, gave me pause and stayed my hand from sending the “Thanks, but no thanks” emails. I have been commissioned by the BBC to present a five part series on language: provisional title Planet Word. The series aims to look at where language came from, how it works in us, how we use it, how it varies around the world, how much it constrains/fosters thought – examining all kinds of issues from the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis to taboo and transgression by way of oratory, poetry, insult, pedantry, dysphasia and the myriad astonishing things language invokes and provokes in us.

It would be quite unthinkable to make a programme on language without looking towards Chinese, of course. The diversity and uniqueness of the aboriginal languages of Australia and the speed of their tragic fall to extinction is something we would need to investigate too, not to mention the journey our language, English, made as it took root in Australian soil. So perhaps I could massacre a whole flock of birds with just two stones? Go to Hong Kong along with the series producer/director John Paul Davidson (who made my documentaries around America and one of the Last Chance to See films too), hire a local crew and shoot footage, pieces-to-camera and interviews relating to the Chinese languages before dropping down to Australia where, after the Sydney Opera House show we could film in and around New South Wales. I would even be saving the BBC money as my flights would all be taken care of by the organisers of the HKBF and the Sydney Opera House event. Saving the BBC money is, of course, the dearest wish of my bosom. I think of little else.

Nothing quite turns out as you expect it to. On the Planet Word front, David Tang and John Paul between them somehow managed to track down Zhou Youguang, the deviser of pinyin, in his 105th year and the oldest and probably the most influential (perhaps second after Tim Berners-Lee) human I have ever met. What is extraordinary is that this was his first ever TV interview. As the individual most responsible for allowing Mandarin Chinese to be transcripted into the Roman alphabet (giving us “Beijing”, for example and “Mao Zedong” instrad of the old Wade-Giles formulations, “Peking” and “Mao Tse Tung”) he could reasonably be called one of the most important linguists who ever lived. He hardly knew it when he was working on his system, of course, but it would prove crucial as a bridge between China and the rest of the world, allowing texting, typing, computing and all the excitements of the modern age to work in Putonghua or Mandarin Chinese.

In the meantime, the Sydney Opera House night sold out very quickly, largely due to the enthusiasm of loyal Australian Twitter followers. It was very gratifying but meant that the opera house asked if I might do a second night. This then led, thanks to the age old rivalry between the two cities, to pressure in the form of a “Come to Melbourne, Stephen” Facebook page, urging me to do a show in that city too. Once again Twitter worked its magic and a second show had to be slotted in. All around these performances John Paul and I managed to film as much as we could of aboriginal languages, surf slang (thanks to Kathy Lette) , Kath and Kim suburban talk, Australian political discourse and much else besides.

How Many Twitter Followers Does It Take To Fill the … ?

Much to my surprise I so enjoyed the Sydney and Melbourne events that I agreed to perform a one man show next month at the Royal Albert Hall in London. I have MC-ed, hosted, guested and otherwise infested that noble venue many times over the last quarter century, but never have I done a whole evening on my own. I am excited. Very excited. Excited in much the way an aristocrat in a tumbril must have been excited as they rattled over the cobblestones towards the Place de la Concorde on their way to face the Paris mob and the fond final attentions of Madame la Guillotine. Heigh ho. You only live once. Tickets, should you be minded to come along, can be found here and here. Beware of touts and unofficial sites. Apologies for booking fees and prices and all the other issues that are out of my hands. That is just how these things are done. I believe if you turn up at the Albert Hall itself you can avoid any such charges, but that brings me to another point. Why London?

Metrocentricity

Followers from Wales, Scotland and especially parts of northern England have asked me, mostly with exemplary patience and politeness, why I am doing this show in London and not elsewhere around the country? Well, I’m afraid it’s simply time, a commodity in which I am horribly deficient. This is not a tour but a short-notice experiment. If it goes well and people seem to enjoy it then I can think of nothing I would enjoy more than travelling around for a month or so, taking in Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and all parts of England.

Part Two While I was away…

The most terrible thing that befell was news of Christopher Hitchen‘s diagnosis of oesophageal cancer. The Hitch is one of the great figures of our age. I have had the pleasure and honour of debating with him on a number of occasions, most recently in Westminster for Intelligence Squared, where we opposed Anne Widdecombe’s motion that the Catholic Church is a force for good in the world. The way Christopher has responded, in interview and in writing, to this assault on his body, is typical of the man. My thoughts (but not prayers) are with him. The Pink List Also while I was away, The Independent on Sunday published their “Pink List”. Many tweeted to congratulate me on “achieving” No. 3 spot in this top 100 of British gay … er … icons… apparently. Well, far be it from me to be ungrateful. I’m sure it’s always nice to be mentioned admiringly, just as it is always dispiriting to be mentioned slightingly. All of you reading this (or those of you that aren’t bots or visitors from other worlds) are human and will understand why a part of me was tickled to be included.

I am sorry to say that I did not read the full list. First equal (“above” me) and pushing me into third place were rugby player Gareth Thomas and Mary “Queen of Shops” Portas which seemed splendid and fitting. Otherwise my eye flicked down to take in friends and others. I gave the whole production little time. My eye never reached the end of the article where resided a “Rogues Gallery”. It had to be pointed out to me by a friend, a dear friend and a brilliant man, Kim Harris (my first proper grown-up lover from student days as it happens) that there was something horrid lurking in the article’s basement. I have been trying to persuade Kim for ages to write a blog, for he puts things so well, far better than I do, as you will agree when you have read this extract from a letter he wrote just a few days ago and which I reproduce with his permission.

Very nice to see you ranking high on The Independent’s Pink List. Quite right too. They made one vast and vastly suggestive mistake, though. They instituted a Rogues Gallery and frogmarched Louie Spence into it. Do you know who I mean? He’s a big old lisping, nelly screamer at Pineapple Dance Studios (Sky something) whom Joe Sixpack has clasped to his bosom because he’s sweet and funny and fabulous. Brightens the day, cheers the hour. There’s another reason the public loves him, but we’ll get to that in a mo. The compilers of the List, however, hate him because – well, can’t you guess? What’s the least imaginative, least penetrating thing you could possibly say about an unreconstructed flamer? That’s right – he “perpetuates the stereotype.” Christ on a marmalade cross but that pisses me right off.

Occupying the top spot was the rugby player, Gareth Thomas, who came out (finally) last year. Well done for that, boyo, I suppose. Can’t have been easy. It usually isn’t for most people, even on the Liberal Riviera where we’re all supposed to be basking today. Now, you can see where I’m going with this, can’t you? Gareth is a “real man”. He was married to a real woman. Louie is not and was not. If only we could all disport ourselves like Gareth the straights won’t hate us whereas if we all carry on like Louie….ach, how quickly these cowardly, self-oppressed, social-climbing McCarthyites forget where they come from. If I remember rightly, the whole Gay Lib thing wasn’t engineered by “real” men at all. It wasn’t sponsored by marines or scaffolders or rugby players. It was ignited by…ah, yes: drag queens.

So, instead of getting a hate on at poor Louie, instead of frantically trying to patrol their butch and instead of gussying up their drool for Gareth into blather about bravery, these creeps should remember the Rainbow. They should remember Diversity. They should remember Tolerance. They should remember that in evincing a distaste for effeminacy they’re simply making an exhibition of their own misogyny. And they should remember that (and here’s that other reason the public likes him) Louie isn’t trying to pass. There’s nothing a straight boy hates more than an obvious fag trying to hide it. I know lists like these are mere churnalism but they’re telling nonetheless.

Thank you, Kim. Thank you for pointing that out and thank you for putting it so very, very well.

Here is that “Rogues Gallery” paragraph on Louie Spence, by the way:

Louie Spence Choreographer and TV star Had this been a list for the greatest reinforcers of gay stereotypes, the star of Sky 1′s car-crash reality show Pineapple Dance Studios would obviously mince it. Alas, as it stands, we can’t help but hear the clock ticking on those 15 minutes of his.

The IoS has its get-out clause prepared, of course… “And the aim [of the Pink List] ? To entertain and celebrate, infuriate and amuse. Above all, to kick-start a debate around the breakfast and lunch-table. Please let us know what you think at the bottom of the page.” But I’m sorry, that is simply not good enough. I say nothing of the sickening and now standard “oh please leave a comment, please, please, please – our advertisers would love it if you all starting flaming and trolling and filling our pages for us. Pleeeeaaase.”

Among the panelists choosing this list was Ben Summerskill, Chief Executive of Stonewall: Stonewall, that same excellent institution that named itself after the bar in Greenwich Village where the drag-queens Kim mentions locked themselves in, fought back against police violence, intimidation and victimisation and kick-started Gay Liberation. I like Ben and admire what he and Stonewall do, but surely they must see how right Kim is? By singling out Louie Spence for lofty disapproval, by sneering at his “mincing” they are turning their back on, dissociating themselves from, insulting and demeaning a fine man and whole way of being. An authentic, strong, charming and loveable person, every bit as “courageous” as the others on the list, certainly more courageous than me, Louie deserves respect and support, not insult and derision. Do they want people like him not to count, do they see him as being guilty of a choice in his manner and his demeanour, just as homophobes everywhere accuse all gay people of choosing their sexuality and preferences? How dare they of all people dismiss a gay man in a few contemptuous, bigoted phrases because he doesn’t fit the “type” that they think a gay man should exemplify?

This isn’t about pussy-footing, or political correctness or humourless righteousness and I wouldn’t bring it into this blog if it didn’t make me so damned angry. I do not know Louie Spence, by the way, have never had the pleasure of meeting him. Dance is not my life and our world outlooks and interests are, I dare say, widely divergent, but that does not mean I cannot respect and admire him. The IoS panel who chose to scorn Louie owe him an apology, and they owe an apology to all like him

There was a time when polari and Julian and Sandy and limp-wristed mincing and winking innuendo were all that came between a certain kind of gay man and his pride, his self-respect and his ability to hold his head high in a hostile world. Read Quentin Crisp’s The Naked Civil Servant or watch John Hurt’s glorious portrayal. It is not the only way for a gay man to be, no one is saying it should be, but it is a wholly proper and acceptable manner (not to mention an often loveable and witty one) and to see it traduced with superiority by the very people who should be supporting and endorsing it sickens me. I have stood up and spoken for Stonewall and its campaigns to stop playground bullying and taunting: it is of course the effeminate and overtly camp boys (or butch girls) at school who first come in for that sort of attention, the kind of attention that alcohol and a gang mentality can turn all too readily into gay-bashing and severe violence. Is it now official Stonewall policy that only “straight-acting” gays are acceptable, that today’s Quentin Crisps and Kenneth Williams’s can count themselves as outcast from “the community”?

Bah. They should read a bit of Judith Butler and think a bit harder about gender and identity. I give up my No 3 position in the Pink List and award it to Louie Spence. Until the next time…. pip pip.

Stephen

UPDATE NEWS FLASH

It is axiomatic that panels and judges of prizes or compilers of lists always sit in conditions of utmost secrecy, but I have had private word of an element of the deliberations that tells me that maybe the deliberators weren’t to blame, but some Sindie journalist who took it upon him or her self to write the Rogues Gallery section without the deliberators’ knowledge or consent. Well, if I have done Ben Summerskill and Clare Balding and the others who helped put the list together a disservice, I am really sorry. I hope it at least teaches them never, ever to trust a newspaper, especially – and this may surprise some – one like the Independent. Good old-fashioned red tops, vulgar, brash and blaring as they may seem, are usually more honourable and straightforward in their dealings than those with pretensions to be “newspapers of record”… Oh dear now I’ve gone and made myself a whole new parcel of enemies. Heigh ho.

S xxx

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