The Stephen Fry Thread

[Rob McCow]

We just watched The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive on BBC4 - I wanted to start a thread on this because it was one of the most interesting, brilliant, sad pieces of TV I've seen in a long time. To see Stephen going round and talking to Carrie Fischer, Robbie Williams, Tony Slattery, Rick Stein and other people about their experiences with bipolar disorder and depression was fascinating and deeply moving.

The most shocking was the gentleman who had a nervous breakdown working for NATO. He ended up having horrific hallucinations and threw himself in front of a truck. He survived, but his injuries were stomach churning.

If you missed part one today, it continues tomorrow on BBC4 at 8pm. Highly recommended.

[Larry]

didn't watch the programm, but I have to say it always amazes me that people like Robbie Williams, who seemingly have every thing that people would want from life suffer from this illness.

[Pip Madeley]

I watched it on its original showing earlier in the year, and agree it was an amazing bit of television. I know someone who is bipolar, so that made it all the more interesting. It’s easy to forget how fragile a thing mental health is.

[SiHart]

I found it incredibly eye opening and incredibly moving too. I had no idea really what it was like and how much of a struggle it can be for the people who have it.

What interested me was that few of the people who are Bi-Polar wanted to take that away from their lives. I suppose it's part of what makes them them, and there's the fear that if they took the drugs regularly they'd be removing an important part of themselves. They all seemed to be looking for a way to cope with it, rather than take it away all together, and that was something I didn't expect.

I don't think I'll ever be as dismissives of it as I used to be again. And if it's raised awreness for me and other people too, then it must be a good thing.

Si xx

[Pip Madeley]

Actor Stephen Fry has broken his arm after falling over while filming in Brazil, the BBC has confirmed. The actor, 50, was filming for the Last Chance To See series, which focuses on the world's endangered species.

A BBC spokesman said Fry was treated at a local hospital before being flown to the US for further treatment and then back to the UK. He would receive more treatment and hoped to be fully recovered to film later in the year, the spokesman added.

"Unfortunately Stephen Fry has broken his right arm after slipping while filming in Brazil for a new BBC Two series, Last Chance To See," the spokesman said. "Stephen will have further treatment next week but he hopes to be fully recovered to continue filming later in the year."

Fry was on location in Tefe to film the release of an endangered Manatee into the wild. The series, made by BBC Wales, reprises the 1990 BBC Radio 4 series of the same name, presented by Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams and zoologist Mark Carwardine, who is also hosting the TV series - this time with Fry as his co-host.

Get well soon Stephen!

[Dirk Gently]

I hope he recovers well. He's one of my favourite TV personalities.

Get well soon, Stephen.

[Pip Madeley]

He's one of my favourite TV personalities.

He's one of my favourite gayers too.

[Dirk Gently]

He'd come in at number 7 on my list.

[Pip Madeley]

Can we have the list?

[Dirk Gently]

No.

[Pip Madeley]

You afraid Angela might see it?

[Dirk Gently]

No. I'm afraid someone would read the list & take offence at being called a "gayer".
It doesn't come across as a pleasant term to me.

[Pip Madeley]

I got it off Little Britian myself, Matt Lucas says it, and I only used the word purely in jest - I'd like to think anyone who knows me would know that.

[Lissa]

It's Fry, SJ's post-operation x-ray.



He's now officially bionic.

[Pip Madeley]

It must have been quite a break!

[Dirk Gently]

So when the director told Stephen to get screwed...

[Rob McCow]

Britain's favourite tall and intelligent Apple I-Phone worshipper is heading to the States - The United States of America. Well, headed there and returned presumably because the first episode of his TV series was on last night.

It was pretty good. Fry was entertaining and informative as ever, full of facts about the history of the US and the background to the places he visited. He used his Apple I-Phone to show us a painting and his Apple Laptop to demonstrate Wikipedia. Meeting the guy who owns Wikipedia was a definite highlight, along with the Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream tour, seeing Fry working as a croupier and his interview of an elderly rich lady who clearly found him very irritating! The 'mafia social club' were fun too, with their movie posters and tales of meeting DeNiro, excitedly showing Fry the small bulletholes in their door like children showing their parents a grazed shin.

However, the scope of the assignment (52 states in 6 hours!) meant that the whole thing felt like a mad dash.

He didn't really connect with most of the people he met either, or if he did it wasn't shown on screen. Most irritating of all was that when the interviewees were speaking, their comments would be cut up with other footage or (worst of all) overdubbed with Fry's own comments. What is the point of talking to these people if you're going to talk over them?

I'll be tuning in next week, but it's just not Michael Palin is it?

[Dirk Gently]

I didn't get to see it unfortunately. However...

(52 states in 6 hours!)

I think you'll find there is only 50 states & one district.

[Lissa]

And I think you'll find there are 46 states, 4 commonwealths and 1 district as Sir Stephen himself explained on QI. Fifty states earned someone a resounding siren and a thoroughly earned deduction of points.

His use of a historic first generation iPhone was a highlight of this week's chapter. The opening narration "I could've been an American called Steve" was the low point. Do we really need a bolted on excuse for Stephen Fry to drive round America and be charming? Apparently we do. The proles have to be hooked using whatever nauseating and artificial device they could think of.

[SiHart]

It was fine. Stephen was as charming and fascinating as ever, but the whole thing rushed past. There didn't seem to be much depth to it, which is a pity, as the bits they did show were very intersting and we could have done with a bit longer at each place/ stae/ commonwealth/ district.

Alas, it's not nearly as good as Michael Palin's travelogues, but it was a diverting watch on a Sunday night.

Si xx

[Rob McCow]

I don't know where I got the number 52 from. Possibly Wikipedia?

A better reason for Fry to visit America would have been 'It's an enormous and powerful country'. That would have done for me Or better still 'I'm going to see where Hugh's been hiding out for the past decade.'

[Rob McCow]

I don't know where I got the number 52 from. Possibly Wikipedia?

A better reason for Fry to visit America would have been 'It's an enormous and powerful country'. That would have done for me Or better still 'I'm going to see where Hugh's been hiding out for the past decade.'

[Captain Tancredi]

I don't know where I got the number 52 from. Possibly Wikipedia?

Or Star Trek-The Next Generation, which I think in one episode showed a future American flag with 52 stars, meant for the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

I'm not sure that something so bitty plays to Fry's strengths, to be honest- one of his many talents is his facility with the English language, and there didn't seem to be much sense of the way different places made him feel or developing his ideas. There were little moments of classic Fry, though- "or, if you're a Stephen, it's bedtime"- and I do want a set of those magnets.

I did also catch part of his Room 101 on one of the satellite channels later on, and he really has let himself go in the last seven years. I look forward to doing the same myself once I hit 50 and no longer need to pretend that I'm making an effort.

[WhiteCrow]

I saw the advert for this, and it looked a little too much like "going to America to be condescending and smug", so didn't really appeal to me.

Though of course maybe America has it coming!

[Alex]

I did also catch part of his Room 101 on one of the satellite channels later on, and he really has let himself go in the last seven years. I look forward to doing the same myself once I hit 50 and no longer need to pretend that I'm making an effort.

His weight's fluctuated a lot over the last few years, a while back he got quite slim again but recently he looks a bit bigger. Not that it matters too much, as long as he manages to stay healthy with it.

I caught about 30 minutes of this but was a bit bored to be honest, I wasn't comfortable with the celebration of the local gangster culture, and the rest of it was so flimsy that I didn't feel like I'd learnt anything new.

I'm a big fan of Stephen, but he's been doing so much lightweight stuff lately (what with Kingdom, and even QI) that it's a bit disappointing to see this isn't that good too, and I hope he has a return to form soon.