Stephen Fry's Autobiography : Moab Is My Washpot Click cover to BUY |
There aren't many people who've become regulars on TV's Parky Show, and still fewer who when confronted with a question from Michael Parkinson like "So when did you first know you were gay?" would answer it in quite the way Stephen Fry did.
"Well I think it was the moment I was born really", claimed Fry. "I looked up into my mother's face, and said 'That's the last time I ever go up one of those!'."
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When God was handing out talent Stephen Fry must've have sneaked back in line. And more than once. The guy's infuriatingly gifted. He's an actor, an orator, a comedian, a playwright, a pilot, a novelist and a librettist. He's the smart arse you'd bash at school. An IQ test result declared he was "approaching genius".
Stephen Fry was born in 1957 in Hampstead, London, but brought up in Norfolk. According to his autobiography, Moab is my Washpot, he had a wretched childhood and an even worse adolescence. Much of it was spent at an all boys boarding school. It was there that he first experienced homosexual stirrings and fell hopelessly in love with another boy. When he came out to his parents at 19 his mother already knew and his father wasn't surprised. After studying at Cambridge, Fry became a face on TV and film. His screen credits include the Blackadders, Fry & Laurie, Jeeves & Wooster, A Fish Called Wanda, Peter's Friends, Spice World, Wilde (in which he played an acclaimed Oscar) and, more recently, Best. Throughout his career Fry's always been openly gay. "Without being priggish and sanctimonious about it, it's a kind of responsibility if you're in public life. If you don't feel ashamed and you don't feel anybody should feel ashamed, then you help other people by being open." Although out of the closet he wasn't between the sheets. He publicly proclaimed celibacy and abstained from sex for almost 16 years. This wasn't so much out of choice but out of a lack of confidence. He was, he said, the last person he'd fancy at a party. The self-loathing has led to suicidal despair. One time, after receiving poor reviews for a role in a West End play, Fry famously did a runner. He had plans to kill himself but thought better of it. He was eventually spotted in Bruges. These days, Fry's said to be a blissfully happy man. This has much to do with the partner he's known for more than five years. Fry is in one of the great traditions of stately British Queens loved by the establishment. Whether it's making jokes about boys in front of Tony Blair and the Royal Family at the opening of the Millenium Dome, or publishing extremely risque bestsellers, it seems that he can get away with just about anything. Even young children will be presented with Stephen's talents this Christmas in his superb readings of the Harry Potter novels for BBC Radio. A supporter of Stonewall and a speaker at AIDS benefits, Stephen Fry's never shied from standing up for our love rights. "What you do with your penis or your bottom or anything else is so supremely irrelevant in a moral sense. It's what we do with our personalities and other people that matters." |
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