Stephen Fry opens up on feeling ‘undesirable’ on 1980s gay scene

Stephen Fry has shattered our hearts as the lovable star has said he felt like an ‘undesirable person’ when on the gay scene in the 1980s.

After moving to London the host said he struggled with loneliness as he opened up on how unhappy he was at the time.

The actor, who has been married to Elliott Spencer since 2015, spoke to Chris Sweeney and Alan Cumming on the first Queer Icons episode of the Homo Sapiens podcast, saying he hated the so-called ‘scene’.

He said: ‘I always hated what was called “the scene” when I arrived in London – I arrived in London at a bad time for any gay person, in 1981 during the HIV virus.’

Former QI star Stephen added: ‘I remember hearing about GRID – gay related immune deficiency and all kinds of other strange words… we’d go to Heaven and various other gay clubs and a sweet gay bar in Chelsea, The Queen’s Head.

‘And I didn’t mind the little old pub but the look up and down sweeping eyes as you walk into a club and, in my case, the look up and down and the quick turn away. I’m such an undesirable person. I’m as far from cute as it’s possible to be.

‘Not that I particularly wanted to be… also I just don’t like dance places, I like talking.’

Speaking about the moment he felt he had to examine his own mindset and address his feelings of unhappiness, Stephen realised he was lonely.

He continued: ‘It wasn’t until I had the awful experience in the mid-90s when I was in a play and I walked out, this was when I had to start examining my mind and what was going on with me and why I was unhappy when I was at the top of the game that I had set myself.

‘I had achieved things I never dreamed of – everything should’ve been wonderful, every light was green and yet I was in such a state of total misery and distress.

‘Weirdly it was almost the exact same time that I was cast in the film to play Oscar Wilde that I met my first boyfriend since Cambridge. I think [during that time] I realised one of the things I was unhappy about was that I was lonely, I really was.’

Stephen has spoken about his bipolar in the past, previously telling Fearne Cotton he feared ‘becoming professionally mentally unstable’.

He said on her Happy Place podcast: ‘There was, and still is, and I still feel it occasionally, a danger of becoming sort of professionally mentally unstable, that that’s what I am, that’s who I am.

‘I’ve always viewed it’s not who I am. It’s a condition I live with.

‘I’m always prepared to talk about it, but there’s also a danger, because I do live with this condition.