Stephen Fry is a national treasure whom half the nation can’t stand. He drops his façade of loveability mid-chortle as soon as Brexit is mentioned. He threw a spectacularly pompous Remainer wobbly a few weeks ago and I remember thinking: is he determined to make the people he disdains actively hate him?
If so, it’s working. Last weekend Fry was on John Cleese’s GB News chat show, talking about his former cocaine habit and its connection to his adolescent consumption of sugar. He mentioned the sweets in the shape of cigarettes that were sold at his school tuck shop. As he put it: ‘When I was a teenager, I had this vast empty hole in me that said, “Feed me, I need this sugar, I need it.” When it wasn’t sugar, it became tobacco, so I smoked, and then in my twenties it became cocaine. I just couldn’t sit still. It’s that addictive impulse.’
Has there ever been a party where a box of chocolates languishes half-eaten?
At which point Fry-haters on social media shrieked like toddlers who’ve overdosed on Sunny Delight.
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