Stephen Fry admits '15 years of cocaine use'

Stephen Fry has admitted to taking cocaine for 15 years saying it was a 'wonderful drug to calm me down'. According to The Sun, in an interview on the Sky Arts show, In Confidence, to screen in June, the QI presenter said: "There was 15 years of pretty chronic cocaine taking. "In my most hyper frames of mind, I found it was a wonderful drug to calm me down. "I tended to take it alone at home and play word games, mind spinning. I'd do very difficult crosswords, I would spend hours on these. "I found it extremely easy to stop, but it took me a very long time to get to a position where I was ready to." Stephen also spoke of the pressures of being famous: "They want an appearance, a quote, a tweet, something... They want to touch the hem of the fame, not the hem of the person. "It's the scale of it... so you resort to not travelling on the Tube or walking round the street any more and going in a big car with a driver. "And people think, 'Oh he think he's so grand, doesn't he?' Well, no I'd rather walk, but sometimes I just can't."

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix.

An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.