Stephen Fry suggests his breakdown ended A Bit Of Fry & Laurie
Stephen Fry has said that A Bit Of Fry & Laurie finished because of his nervous breakdown.
Fry makes the admission in the third series of Radio 4's What's Funny About..., beginning Saturday, in which veteran producers Peter Fincham (Smack The Pony, Big Train) and Jon Plowman (Absolutely Fabulous, The Vicar Of Dibley), the latter of whom produced Fry and Hugh Laurie's beloved BBC sketch show, interview the pair about their creative partnership.
Elsewhere in the five-part documentary series, Fincham and Plowman also speak to Ricky Gervais about making After Life and the importance of music in the Netflix comedy; Jonathan Lynn about writing Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister with Antony Jay, and the politicians that inspired Jim Hacker; Sophie Willan on Alma's Not Normal and the importance of telling authentic stories and Richard Curtis and Lenny Henry on Comic Relief's foundation and its future on the eve of the charity's 40th birthday.
A Bit Of Fry & Laurie's fourth series had just begun airing on BBC One in February 1995 when Fry walked out on the West End play Cell Mates, in which he starred with Rik Mayall, after a bad review of his performance, before travelling to Belgium and contemplating suicide.
Leading to the play's early closure, his decision was initially blamed on him having an attack of stage fright but Fry, who has attempted suicide on a number of occasions, has since attributed it to his bipolar disorder.
He told Fincham and Plowman that the "rather terrible moment" when he "had a sort of breakdown, really, and kind of reassessed life generally", was an "embarrassing reason". But it "probably had a lot to do" with A Bit Of Fry & Laurie not returning.
For his part, Laurie couldn't recall the moment when they resolved to call time on the sketch show. "I don't remember making a decision and locking up the shed" he said.
Elsewhere in the retrospective, produced by Owen Braben (Blackadder: The Lost Pilot) for Expectation (The Change, Alma's Not Normal), Fry and Laurie reflect upon graduating from the Cambridge Footlights to the BBC just as alternative comedy was beginning to kick against that time-honoured career path, making them feel like "being in disco and suddenly you see the Sex Pistols" Fry recalled.
They also discuss the influence of Monty Python and The Two Ronnies; the political targets of their sketches; Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson's painting and decorating skills after the future creators of The Fast Show worked on their house; script editor Jon Canter's hatred of their cocktail-making "soupy twist" catchphrase and the relative paucity of comedians eliciting comedy from the English language itself.
"So few people think of it as a source of humour, which I think is a shame" says Fry. "The very fact that there is such a thing as language is funny. And the different discourses that different people have, and mixing them up, and just taking a joy in that [felt important]."