STEPHEN FRY

Dear Stephen

After reading on the BBC news website of the upset you have recently been caused, I felt moved to write you a personal message. After pondering how best to ensure that it reached you, I decided to add it after Jo's letter, in the hopes that others might also add their support here, and that we might collectively catch your eye.

While I cannot claim to have any meaningful understanding of your personal experiences, I am no stranger to depression, and I relate with deepest sympathy to a feeling of misery so great that even the tiniest slight can push one over the edge. It is this empathy which has driven me to put keyboard to pixel, in the hopes of providing whatever aid I may.

I can speak to you no louder than your myriad fans, who are busily filling your twitter feed with posts and creating online groups even as I type. I feel the need to make a somewhat bolder statement however, partially because of my vastly oversized ego, but mostly because I have an ever-so-slightly different comment to voice.

For me, the point is not whether or not you continue to use twitter, but rather, whether or not you continue to shine as you always have. I would not presume to tell you how to spend your time; keeping even vaguely up to date with an internet following as vast as yours would seem an impossible task to me.

However, it seems to me that you are rare among those who bear the double edged blade that is fame, in that you have a particularly unique relationship with your fans and followers. I would hate to see so noble an attitude damaged by something so simple.

In my philosophy, universal popularity is clearly unattainable. In a society of such vast breadth of character, no one thing, one ideal, one person, will ever appeal to all. Everyone will always have detractors. And some of them will be rather loud and obnoxious. But clearly we should not let them sever our links to those whose lives we bring joy to.

Over the years, I have encountered your work in a great many forms. Each time, I have been struck by a man who is kind, charming, witty, skilled, and wise. For you to change who you are in even the smallest way because of a harsh comment would seem to me an absolute travesty.

I seem to have meandered about the point, so let me make it. In my experience, just as one slight, delivered at the wrong moment, can make the world seem awful, so can a few (or perhaps a few too many) words of encouragement make all the difference. I hope I have been some small part of such help.

Don't give up on people, Stephen. People are all different. That's what makes them interesting.

My thoughts with you
Kindest regards

Peter