"This programme contains very strong language." "He thinks he can't dance." "He thinks he can't dance." "He may be right." "He can't tango or foxtrot or, or boogie." "My memory is that he's the worst singer in the world." "# I'm a hard-headed woman I'm a bitch on heat... #" "He's not good at sport." "He can't play cricket." "He loves the game, but he can't play it, at all." "He can't lose board games very graciously." "I don't know if he can do hairdressing." "Maybe he can't." "I'd like to think he couldn't." "But he'd teach himself, wouldn't he?" "Ah!" "Yes, it is nice, isn't it?" "There's a little man in the village who runs up my skirts." "And your name is?" "Stephen Fry." "And your occupation?" "Principal ballerina with the Maryinsky State Opera." "Stephen could have been quite a few things, what's so great is that he's lots of things." "Polymath." "Raconteur." "Writer, wit..." "Broadcaster." "Actor, director..." "Professionally tall." "Er, shot putter." "He's one of life's enthusiasts." "He's a great populariser, but without losing any of his own integrity." "He's a surprisingly good kisser." "He's incredibly versatile - nauseatingly, disgustingly versatile." "I've always felt, a jolly good egg." "Me and Hugh and Stephen were all contemporaries at Cambridge, so we all arrived at exactly the same time." "I knew of Stephen's existence long before he knew of mine." "I had watched him in many plays, he was a sort of straight actor at university." "It so happened that I ended up in a position of some power " "I had to put this show together, a comedy show, a review." "I didn't want it to be" "I didn't want it to be shiny-faced undergraduates singing songs and being larky." "I wanted it to be grown-up and mature." "And Stephen had that in spades, in fact, he had it in every suit, and so, I approached him, via Emma Thompson, as the go-between." "I like to think of myself as having been entirely responsible for the whole Fry-Laurie phenomenon, but of course they would have met because they were destined always to be friends." "Heaven be praised, we made each other laugh." "SPEAKS GOBBLEDEGOOK" "Now, that's a lot of nonsense, and you know it." "He made me laugh such a lot, and continues to do so, and has made me laugh now for 25 years." "I just knew that he was the man for me." "As it were." ""Ah, Mr Lawson Particle," cried the Count, "welcome to Castle Dracula." ""Tell me, what blood type are you?"" ""A."" "I said, "What blood type are you?"" ""Oh!" I said. "B."" "If you go back as far as 1981, at the Edinburgh Festival, everyone there was thinking, we've had enough of the Cambridge Footlights and that sort of rather jolly, boating sense of humour." "Other things were growing up." "So, by 1981, they decided to institute a thing called the Perrier Award, to reward the most interesting thing in comedy." "And lo and behold, it must have annoyed the Perrier committee such a lot, the very best show of that year happened to be the Cambridge Footlights, which had in it, not only Stephen Fry, it had Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson." "Oh, Robert, if only you understood how weak I felt." "I do feel so desperately weak." "Oh, but my darling, you must be strung." "You ken be strung." "Be strung." "Be strang for me, Elizibith." "Ken you be strong for me?" "Be strung for me." "I think I've still got the bonnet from the Elizabeth Barrett Browning sketch. "God, what does he know?" ""Oh, but Deddy, Deddy doesn't marry, you can't merry Deddy," ""you're not gonna merry Deddy, you're going to marry me." "Oh-oh!"" "There was a lot of that, yes, we did enjoy that." "There is this folk myth amongst the terminally resentful that Stephen and Hugh, as it were, left Cambridge with monocles flashing in their eyes, and looked out at the world, surveying it like" "Satan on a mountain, and said, er, "Right, where should we go," ""Hugh, old chap, to absolutely ascend the pinnacles of comedy?"" "That is not how it works at all." "They've got where they have got to because they are both extremely talented." "I think the first time I saw Stephen Fry on TV was probably The Young Ones." "The University Challenge episode was great fun." "UNIVERSITY CHALLENGE THEME PLAYS" "Representing Footlights, we have Lord Monty..." "Hello." "Lord Snot..." "He-he-hel" "Miss Money Sterling..." "Ah..." "I And..." "I guess it was kind of my idea that my other friend should come in and be in The Young Ones." "Who is the richest person in the world?" "Footlights, Snot!" "It's me, isn't it?" "It was just a great episode, and Stephen, Hugh and Emma brought their wonderful..." "Say embryonic, it wasn't embryonic to them, but to the world... comic character talents, and of course, it just exploded comic character talents, and of course, it just exploded into The Young Ones mix." "Relax, we can handle this." "Vivian..." "Achtung!" "It's not an automatici" "My favourite comedy thing that Fry ever did was Saturday Night Fry, series one of Saturday Night Fry." "On the radio." "Well, if that hasn't moistened your laughter glands and whipped you into a whirling, giddy fever of comic anticipation, then my name's Stephen Fry." "My mates and me boot-legged it off Radio 4, and we'd exchange cassettes with each other." "I just thought they were the funniest things I'd ever heard." "You find the outside the church of St Barnabas the Smiley in the little village of Skettisham." "I'm Bayliss Oddknob, and you're listening to On Location." "This week, we're On Location for the shooting of a new British film, from the director Tumphrey Puke." "He used to play a character called Donald Trefusis, who'd occasionally crop up on Loose Ends, and I always loved Trefusis." "Parent power and democracy are as closely related as Mike Gatting and the Queen Mother, and unless someone has been keeping a very juicy scandal from me, that is, not very closely at all." "I loved A Bit Of Fry And Laurie." "I really loved it - I thought it was very, very funny." "I used to be a real big fan of A Bit of Fry And Laurie, I loved it." "It sort of slipped by on the radar, when people talk about great comedy shows," "A Bit Of Fry And Laurie gets missed out." "Welcome to A Bit Of Fry And Laurie." "Mesdames, Messieurs, bienvenue a un morceau de Fry et Laurie." "Stote messi bim, goodyende, fenstoopke, Fry... stink Laurie." "The most interesting thing about it was that it was entirely without peer, because Stephen and Hugh are entirely original." "I just thought they looked like a couple of schoolboys, and I quite like that, just mucking about, you know?" "There would be 20 different ideas in every half-hour, and good, I think that's what a sketch show should be like." "See this?" "You could eat your dinner off this." "Sex is nothing to fax home about." "Well, we..." "Oh, Christ, I've left the iron on." "The fact that the friendship is real, it's not a professional coupling." "The thing with Morecambe and Wise was that they were genuinely really close, and Stephen and Hugh express that as well in their show." "We had no conventional double-act dynamic, because we're sort of close to being the same height, we couldn't get that, erm... you know, the short, fat funny one, and the tall, lanky, laconic one." "'We just weren't naturally that kind of a double-act.' 92 years old." "That's right." "93 come November." "92 years old, and I've never had oral sex." "Well, I should think not, indeed." "Oral sex." "The idea!" "Never ridden a camel." "You're just bubbling now, Mr Simnark." "Never watched a woman urinate." "I shall get very cross with you in a minute, I shall, really!" "Never killed a man." "There's a certain man I shall be killing if he's not very careful." "He was funny in it, and he... he loves language so much, and there are a couple of sketches, monologues that he did, that stand out, where he just play... he just played with words." "I do have a peculiarity, which I feel I must in all softness be rather heavenly about just for a divine." "Like an increasing number of people today, I have a pair of nipples attached to my chest." "Here and, to a lesser extent, there." "But, and this is where I'm forced to be a little more delicious than usual, while this one here, Neville, is rosy and healthy and everything one could want, this one, Sheila, is bright blue, and something of a young disappointment." "Well, there, in a smooth-limbed, golden-thighed way, we are..." "The things that make you laugh with Stephen Fry are the rewarding and nourishing and nutritional comedy that he presents you with." "He has, you know, obviously, an extremely wonderful way with words, and a very sort of superior way of delivering them, and I think his comedy lies in his skill with hauteur." "Mr Drip tells me that it's one of the most mature and exciting poems he's ever received from a pupil." "Don't suck your thumb, boy." "Well, I'm not, sir." "No, that was just a piece of general advice for the future." "He was very good... as a woman." "These?" "Bernard Matthews golden turkey drummers." "You'd be surprised how versatile they are." "I've got one in at the moment, actually." "They did this letters thing, and say, "We've had a letter from..."" "And they were always ridiculous names, and I always try and come up with a new name when I see Stephen that I remember from, like, Felicity Waistsplendour," "Gengolphus Pantygrace, all these ridiculous names," "Jenny Moist nee Jenny Split." "Yours, Peter Comeinmyear." "£5 on its way to you, Mr Comeinmyear." "It was fantastically rude." "The stuff they got away with, I mean, they had a character called Mr Pentafuck, or Mr Cuntablast." "And they'd just stick it into a sketch, and nobody seemed to notice." "I've just been looking for a particular book in the sports section, and it doesn't seem to be there." "It's by Ted Cuntablast, and, er..." "I think it's called The West Indies, A Nation Of Cricketers." "That'll be in the sports section." "It was great, it was just very exciting." "Watching that show was the same kind of excitement as watching The Young Ones - you kind of went, "Did you just hear what they said?" "!"" "It's so rude, brilliant!" "That's the lot, then, is it?" "Yep." "Already got a triple knob joint with snatch membrane, have you?" "Should I have?" "Well, are you going straight or curved?" "Straight, then curved." "Should be OK, as long as you remember to suck the clenching lobe tight to the bowl thrust." "Obviously, yeah." "And whatever you do, don't forget to lubricate your slip hole before any grip jigging." "The Peter and John sketches, the two businessmen who behaved as though they were running a multi-national company, but in fact ran a very small-time health club in Uttoxeter..." "Keith called a couple of hours ago from Helsinki." "But that was Keith just now, surely." "Yeah, just now, our time, but he called a couple of hours ago, his time." "They spoke like that to each other - damn, damn - they said, "Damn!"" "A lot, it was just very funny, and one of them was recently divorced from Marjorie." ""Damn, you look good, Marjorie."" "Oh, Marjorie would float her own grandmother as a holding corporation and strip her bare of preference stock if she thought it would hurt me." "Three pints of damn and a chaser of hell blast!" "Sometimes when you're in a sketch with someone that you like and admire, it's just simply like having the most expensive seat in the house, there are the people in Row A, and they paid £12, or whatever and... £12." "Who pays £12 for anything now?" "Erm..." "But there am I, a matter of two feet away, getting to see... getting to see him be funny, and there is no greater pleasure than that." "A first-class flight to Chichester." "Table for two on the sleeper from Chichester to Stroud." "Hair-trigger, fur barrel, soft eared bullets, just as you like them." "You certainly came prepared, didn't you?" "I prefer to put it this way." "I certainly came prepared, didn't I?" "Welsh passport, hotel reservations at the Welcome Break, Low Wycombe, all in the name of one Lewis Potter." "And the real loess Potter?" "A chartered prostitute from Hereford." "Died two years ago in a smiling accident." "He has this, again, remarkable ability to portray different characters, er, very believably, I think." "And, er..." "I think one of the best, er, demonstrations he gave of that was in the Blackadder series, which I thought was extraordinary." "The thing that's made me laugh and laugh was when Stephen was really cruel to Hugh in Blackadder." "When he's playing the Prince, and keeps hitting... hitting Hugh, and I think there was something in that that released, released probably something that Stephen had been longing to do for years, to Hugh, which was just belt him one." "How dare you sit there in the presence of your betters, get up!" "Oh, crumbs, yes, I forgot, I'm sorry." "You speak when you're spoken to!" "Unless you'd rather be flayed across a gun carriage!" "Well?" "I just remember being helpless with laughter, watching them do it, it was just such a very, very funny scene." "Because it's got something - you know, there's some wish-fulfilment in there, I think." "We no longer treat servants that way in London society." "Why, I hardly touched the man." "I think you hit him very hard." "Nonsensel That would have been a hard hit." "I just hit him like that." "Yes, I don't know what the hitting was supposed to express." "It's not really the gist of our relationship." "I just liked falling over, and he liked making me fall over, and that seemed to be reason enough." "It's not very profound, is it?" "There's also something very funny about Stephen being cruel, because it is his purpose in life to be kind." "And so when he lets that cruelty out, there's something terrifically compelling about it, and very, very funny, for me, in particular." "Take my hat at once, sir, unless you wish to feel my boot in your throat, and be quicker about it than you were with the door." "Yes, my lord." "I'm a duke, not a Lord!" "Where were you trained, a dago dancing class?" "Blackadder was just great, I think it was a great series anyway, from the first to the fourth, but particularly in the fourth," "I kind of did look forward to General Melchett coming on." "What's going on, Darling?" "Captain Blackadder to see you, sir." "Ah, excellent." "Just a short back and sides today, I think." "They just made him look like Kitchener." "The absurdity of the landed gentry sending the working classes into war to die in their millions was just taken up so well by Blackadder Goes Forth." "Are you looking forward to the Big Push?" "No, sir, I'm absolutely terrified." "Mmm-mm-mmm!" "The healthy humour of the honest Tommy." "Ah-ha!" "Don't worry, my boy, if you should falter, remember that Captain Darling and I are behind you." "About 35 miles behind you." "His performance, really, for me, was really the triumph of the whole show in a way." "Because, of course, it would be possible to get an older actor to play that sort of Kitchener figure." "But it wouldn't have been the same, somehow." "It was important to have a younger person mocking or satirising the officer class." "And I can't think of anyone else who could have done it in the way Stephen played Melchett." "It was an extraordinary thing." "It will catch the watchful Hun totally off-guard." "Doing precisely what we've done 18 times before is exactly the last thing they will expect us to do this time." "There is, however, one small problem." "Everyone always gets slaughtered in the first 10 seconds?" "That's right." "I think that Stephen's performance in Blackadder IV is the sort of definitive framing and attack on the British establishment." "I suppose that's one of the things that people love about Stephen, that he has all the signs of an establishment figure - public school, Cambridge, smooth rise to success, knowing all the most famous people in the country," "and yet, he is absolutely aware of all their flaws and Melchett is the definitive not-listener, and that's great." "Also, he's tall, isn't he?" "I'm always frightened of tall people." "You want me to sit in no man's land painting pictures of the Germans." "Precisely." "Good man." "Well, it's a very attractive proposition, gentlemen, but unfortunately, not practical." "You see, my medium is light." "It'll be pitch-dark, I won't be able to see a thing." "Uh..." "That is a point." "I'll tell you what, we'll send up a couple of flares." "You'll be lit up like a Christmas tree!" "Oh, excellent, excellent, glad I checked." "I think that Stephen is often underrated for his acting." "Miss Bowes, do you care about walking?" "What about it?" "I thought we might take some nature walks together, discussing art and literature like this." "But I'd better warn you, I'm pretty susceptible." "Perhaps we should postpone the walks until the weather is finer, it'd be too bad if your book was held up because you'd caught a cold." "I'm talking about sex, Miss Bowes!" "Yes, you see, I believe in utter frankness about sexual things." "He's got the stillness of an actor, and I think that's something that's very difficult to capture, as a performer, particularly if you come from comedy, you're expected to be slightly wild-eyed and flailing arms," "which he isn't." "Hello, Daniel Davenport, congrats on a terrific little innings." "But the umpire's finger's up, and you're out." "Hit wicket!" "Who is it?" "Just some fools messing around with the answering machine." "That's the trouble with those things." "People can't resist being childish." "As a straight dramatic actor, it's as if there is some sort of..." "I... profound sadness underneath all of his, erm, all of his gregariousness and his desire to entertain and make people feel good." "It's as if there is some sadness." "I suppose I'm as well qualified as anyone else to say whether or not that's true." "So, is it true?" "Is there a deep sadness?" "Well, yes, there may be." "That has the lot to do with his power and appeal as an actor, he's very engaging," "I feel for him when I watch him." "My experience with him on Peter's Friends, where he had to carry quite a large part of the emotional weight of the movie, I thought he did beautifully." "We shot it in," "I don't know, 10 days for two and six." "And there was Stephen suddenly doing a major part and holding a film, and doing it wonderfully well." "Oh, and, er, what's all this, then?" "It's called a pot belly, Andrew, we have those in England, along with culture." "On the first day of rehearsal for Peter's Friends, he walked into the room, where I was about to start directing him and the others, and I was about to say, "Good morning, Stephen." He said, "Beethoven is an extraordinary man."" ""What?" "Beethoven's an extraordinary man, Mozart even more so." ""I mean, to describe them as fit for purpose would be an understatement, they have a direct hotline to God," ""creatively, they're absolutely perfect and..."" ""Stephen, Stephen, what, what, what are you talking about?" "We're about to start rehearsing Peter's Friends, our contemporary film comedy."" ""Brahms is another one, er, Bach..." "Stephen, what is going on?"" ""They knew exactly what they were doing, they were wonderful at it..."" "I said, " Are you feeling slightly self-conscious about rehearsing this dance?""Yes, that's it, that's it." ""I don't want to dance, I've got this bloody awful body, and I don't want to do it." ""I'm not Mozart, and not Beethoven."" ""Well, they weren't dancers, were they?"" "And he..." "I mean, Christ, five minutes of the most brilliant articulation of the nature of genius, on the way to saying, "I'm quite shy about doing the very silly dance" ""where we all have to wear stockings and suspenders."" "# Hammersmith and Baron's Court..." "Kensington and Bayswater..." "# Paddington And change for Maida Vale, whoo!" "#" "But he could easily have said, "Er, can we do this quite slowly and quietly, cos I'm a bit nervous?"" "I hasten to add that all five of the other actors in that dance had done just that, it's just that they hadn't given the four-page speech that Stephen had." "And it was one of the first things to examine Aids, and the possibility of losing your friends young." "I intend to live a long time, thanks very much." "I'm going to outlive you all." "Look, if there's anything we can do..." "Anything, anything, anything at all." "Yes." "I..." "I'm so sorry, Peterl" "He knows, he knows you're sorry, dear." "I love you." "I know, Andrew." "Jeeves and Wooster, they were born to play those roles." "I was sent by the agency, sir." "I was given to understand that you required a valet." "It's full of the most wonderful wit and originality." "Great stuff, I'm so glad they put it on, because I think, as Stephen and Hugh Laurie thought, that it wouldn't work perhaps on television." "But amazingly, it did." "Drink this, sir - it's a little preparation of my own invention." "Gentlemen have told me they find it extremely invigorating after a late evening." "If I read Wodehouse, Stephen Fry is Jeeves, I know people were narked, going, "Stephen Fry is too young to be Jeeves," but I thought he was brilliant," "I thought that that was what Jeeves is like." "He hearkens back to an earlier age, not a Victorian age, but the inter-war years." "He has the language for it, he has the mental equipment, he has the social equipment for it," "He can fully inhabit that world and bring it back to us." "I'm sorting through these clothes." "These are for repair and these are for discarding." "Wait a second." "This white mess jacket is brand new." "I assumed it had got into your wardrobe by mistake, sir or else that it had been placed there by your enemies." "I will have you know, Jeeves, that I bought this in Cannes." "And wore it, sir?" "Every night, at the casino." "Beautiful women used to try and catch my eye." "Presumably they thought you were a waiter, sir." "They certainly gave it more than just the silliness, they gave it three dimensions, which is certainly in the writing." "And his Jeeves was a great creation." "Help me on with the jacket, Jeeves." "Erm, which way up does it go, sir?" "His performance in Wilde was fantastic." "No one at that point, having seen him do the Fry and Laurie sketches, would've thought he'd be able to kind of step up to the plate in that way." "Before we started doing the film, you know, I'd not really seen Stephen act-act before." "It was a big leading part, it was going to require a huge amount of complexity and acting chops, really." "I wasn't sure if Stephen was going to be able to do it, to be honest." "And I was just blown away by what he did." "I'm not taking him back, Robbie." "Not again." "I can't." "I've been very foolish, very fond but, er, now I must grow up myself." "Oh, please don't do that." "You're an artist." "Artists are always children at heart." "It's a tremendous performance, and it's a very difficult part to play well and to play sensitively." "And he was so touching, so good at it, and so louche, as well." "So, I think it released an awful lot of his... inner stuff." "It seems like something changed in him through doing that film, certainly around that period of time, and something that was being... guarded, maybe, or withheld, or whatever it was, seemed to be dropped." "I feel... like a city that's been under siege for 20 years." "And suddenly, the gates are thrown open, and the citizens come pouring out to breathe the air, walk the fields and pluck the wild flowers." "I feel... relieved." "I think I unleashed the inner... the inner monster that is Stephen Fry the sexual being." "That may have been what it was." "I think he has described Kingdom as putting on a comfortable pair of slippers, and it kind of is, you kind of know where you are with it," "I don't think it's pretentious, I think that's part of its success." "Er, and part of that is his central performance." "Everyone else I qualified with is in the High Courts." "Me?" "I move your old toys round Market Shipborough." "Well, that's because they made the mistake of getting good degrees from well-regarded universities!" "Your genius, Lyle, is to avoid such an obvious route to legal stardom." "No other candidate I interviewed chose his uni on the basis of there being a snooker room in every hall of residence." "It's a fantastic part for him, it's a little bit like Cracker was for Robbie." "It just met him right in the centre." "And action!" "When Bright Young Things came along, we all thought, well, of course he's going to direct a film, he's going to do everything." "And I thought his directing debut, I suppose it was, the feature film, I thought was dazzling." "The thing I was most jealous about on Bright Young Things was that Stephen enjoyed doing it so much." "I'd meet him and he'd say, "God, isn't it fun?" ""The casting is so fun, the technicalities are so fun," ""I love learning about the camera and how it all works!"" "And I think that's the wonderful thing about him, the relish with which Stephen goes at things." "He taught himself the technicalities of film-making, so, he wasn't going," ""I'm just making a film, but I'll let other people..."" "No, he wants to make sure that he knows what he's doing, and he's in control of it." "So, lovely band, we're gonna do..." "We'd get to the end of a scene, and instead of saying cut, he'd go, "Lovely!"" "Or, you know, he'd say something " ""Positively orgasmic!"" "And, so..." "Hearing that coming out from this huge, this huge man, with these great big headphones on as well, it was a great... a great image." "There was a whole semi-generation of young English actors and actresses that he has helped to develop and bring to the public's attention, because he was bright enough to spot them." "Every day, there were these actors coming in - you know, Peter O'Toole," "Dan Ackroyd, Stockard Channing, all these great, great actors." "And they just would do anything for Stephen, because that's what he inspires in people." "But he'd be terribly nervous about having to give them any kind of notes." "Why don't you come in?" "It's absurd to walk to the station in this." "15 miles, for God's sake, are you mad?" "Come about the vacuum cleaner, have you?" "No." "I thought it was a wonderful piece of direction by Stephen Fry, I really did." "I thought it was a lovely film, and quite a difficult film to get right - to catch the tempo and the pace and the rhythm of that period in British history and deal with characters who it would be so easy to make them seem buffoons" "and foolish hedonistic... wastes." "But he actually makes you care about them, or those we're meant to care about." "And I think it was a real achievement." "I hope he does some more." "And casts me." "Possibly." "I'm available." "Iron bolts were drawn back, the portal swung open and Count Dracula's manservant stood before me." "Of all the hideously disfigured spectacles I have ever beheld, those perched on the end of this man's nose remain forever pasted into the album of my memory." "Stephen has an enormous love of language." "In that, he and I share a mistress." "I think I said earlier that our language, English..." "As spoken by us... as we speak it, certainly, defines it." "We are defined by our language, if you will." "Hello." "We're talking about language." "As Wilde said, "any man who would call a spade a spade" ""should be compelled to use one." "It's all he's fit for."" "I think that Stephen Fry exhibits that quality." "He doesn't necessarily use language efficiently in terms of succinctly, but he uses it beautifully and colourful..." "He paints with language." "He finds humour." "The fact that Stephen can go from incredibly erudite phrases and references to operas and great writers to a great phrase that he came up with on the Kumars." ""The other man's arse is always cleaner" as my uncle used to say." "It's great." "You can say that encompasses just about everything." "People who try to aggrandise language into something that's right or wrong... you might just as well say that the person is right or wrong for existing." "It's just arse gravy." "You know?" "AUDIENCE LAUGH" "He's got a fantastic sense of how stupid the English language can be." "Our language, Tiger, our language..." "Hundreds of thousands of available words, frillions of legitimate new ideas." "So that I can say the following sentence and be utterly sure that no one has said it before in history of human communication..." ""Hold the newsreader's nose squarely, waiter," ""or friendly milk will countermand my trousers."" "Stephen has been compared by the press and by people with the best intentions to Oscar Wilde." "But at one level, I think the comparison can be borne out." "That is that Stephen is never as brilliant as when he is in conversation." "Stephen Fry is more or less your perfect talk-show guest." "Quite simply the cleverest man I've ever met" " Mr Stephen Fry." "He makes my job very, very easy." "He lists his recreations in Who's Who as smoking, drinking, swearing and pressing wild flowers." "Ladies and gentlemen, Stephen Fry." "You always get the sense that there's a conversation going on." "It's not a set up for him to make jokes or some huge political point." "It is absolutely a conversation." "He can take a bit of teasing." "At least I think he can." "So there are few jokes you can make at him or about him." "You haven't got to 40 yet." "No." "Isn't that a bit young to be writing an autobiography?" "Probably." "But Laurie Lee started his first biography when he was 11." "Marvellous writer." "But a great writer." "That's true." "But he's not going to curl up and die." "He'll come and zap straight back with some witticism." "Thanks, you pig-eyed sack of shit." "He's a good teller of stories." "An anecdotist." "Churchill was woken up one Sunday morning when he was Prime Minister in '50s again, by a private secretary who was rather worried and said "I'm afraid there are some rather bad news."" "Churchill said, "War?" "We've lost Somalia?" "What is it?"" "He said, "No." "It's one of our backbench MPs." "One of our squires from the shires." ""Unfortunately he was arrested last night in St James's Park, with a guardsman, a guardee." ""And sadly it's in the News of the World and there's going to be a bit of a stink about it."" "Churchill said, "Last night?"" ""Yes, Prime Minister." "And he said, "It was very cold last night, wasn't it?"" "And the secretary said, "Yes, in fact I believe it was the coldest February night for 17 years."" "And Churchill said, "Makes you proud to be British."" "One of the best I've ever had in all the years I've been doing this job." "He's like Peter Ustinov," "Jonathan Miller." "He's like Muggeridge was." "People with great intelligence who, have a great capacity to popularise that intelligence, if you like." "A lot of actors can't tell stories." "And even if actors are funny people, they can't actually..." "It doesn't really happen." "But he really has that gift." "You want to sit round a fire with him and just listen to him telling you everything he knows, which would take quite a long time I think." "I wouldn't allow myself to be a weed, so it was cricket," "I'd lie on the field with a limp bound copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, and say," ""Wait a minute, girls, I'm just coming to the last verse," ""I can't possibly catch balls at the moment."" "But it was a very hard." "If bullied, I was able to have the line..." ""Don't beat me up, I'll just get an erection."" "I recommend to anybody out there being threatened by bullies, that is a very..." "It's a very good line." "I think that, probably, Stephen, and I may be entirely wrong, is really a writer who has added in, rather like a Renaissance man, all these other extraordinary attributes." "He's one of the very few people who's primarily a performer who is also a really gifted writer." "His writing in the novels, the autobiography and screenplays, for me, they're so full of the real man, this kind of mixture of this kind of mixture of compassion, wisdom and madness, and comic brilliance." "I think his autobiography is the best thing he's ever written." "I think it's very, very good, and one of the best autobiographies I've read." "The thing that stayed with me most from that, is when he writes about not being able to join in." "I suppose the rest of the school was playing cricket and I had managed to get myself off games by inducing an asthma attack." "I loved the feeling of having the school to myself." "The distant shouts and echoes without and the absolute stillness within." "The thing that Stephen Fry who's capable of delivering the performances that he has and the writing that he has, still has alcoves of insecurity, makes me feel like, oh well, that's all right then." "You can still succeed in life whilst carrying those." "Paperweight was a very important to me, because in the dark days of being a teenager, there was someone who..." "For a lot of people, they do it through music, they go, "I'm not alone cos I have Morrissey, or I have David Bowie."" "I had Stephen Fry." "And it made all the difference." "I've read his 'Poetry', the book about poetry, which is so brilliant, and I knew nothing about it." "It's really taught me a lot." "I'm very grateful for that." "A woman who's very keen on chocolate gave me some splendid chocolate and saw me biting a bit off and said, "don't you know how to eat chocolate?"" "I said "no, at least, I thought I did."" "She said, "No, get the tiny bit there, put it on your tongue," ""10 minutes, it'll take." "Just let it melt." ""Just occasionally push it up against the roof of the mouth." ""And this great rainbow a flavours and textures melts in your mouth."" "That's what poetry is in a sense." "It slows you down, rather beautifully." "And you just enjoy the bounce and heft and glory of one word following another." "I was interviewing him about it and I thought," "I don't know whether I can even feign interest in this subject." "Read it, and loved it." "I can't claim to have written poetry as a result of that book, but certainly, I approached it less warily and less suspiciously than I did beforehand." "So, I would thank Stephen for that." "I think The Hippopotamus" "I think The Hippopotamus is Stephen's best novel and stands against any of the really good novels of the last 20 years." "Any Human Hearts, London Fields, Birdsong..." "I really think that Hippopotamus is that good." "I feel that his writing doesn't get paid the attention that it deserves because there's something about reviewing..." "It is the most churlish, resent-laden genre of journalism that exists." "And people feel he has quite enough success already." "Welcome to Argue the Toss." "My tosser this week is Simon Kitouris." "Simon, you saw that sketch." "What did you think?" "I thought the sketch worked on two levels." "Only two?" "Yes, you're right." "I'm being simplistic." "I thought it worked on nine levels." "I thought I spotted 12." "I'm an insomniac and there was a stage where the only thing that helped me get to sleep..." "it didn't make me fall asleep because it was boring, but it lulled me into this gentle world of images - was Stephen narrating the Harry Potter books." ""You'll get your first sight of Hogwart's in a sec," Hagrid called over his shoulder." ""Just round this bend here."" "I didn't choose Stephen although I would have chosen Stephen." "I was given..." "I was told that three people were in the running and Stephen was one of them." "He was the third name mentioned to me and I immediately blurted out, "Oh, let's have Stephen Fry."" "The combination of Jo Rowling's words and his performance makes..." "It's the best thing that Harry Potter has ever done." "It's better than reading it in your head and better than the movies." "It's a fantastic thing." "Neck and neck they hurtled towards the snitch." "All the chasers seemed to have forgotten what they were supposed to be doing as they hang in mid-air to watch." "I'm as disappointed that the books are going to end because it means that Stephen's narration will end too." "Now I'm depressed." "Do you think that naturalists observing sensitive ecosystems are subject to the Heisenberg principle - the act of measuring alters the behaviour of the object being measured?" "That is a profoundly intelligent and interesting question." "I would say, however, that it comes down not so much to the Heisenberg principle of altering events by observing them - that's more true of discrete quantum phenomena in the cosmos and I think in the cases of observing animals, it's more or just a question of solipsism" "which goes back to the idea of Bishop Berkeley and if a cow is alone in a field does it exist if there's no-one there to perceive it?" "Esse est percipe, if you remember, is the phrase." "I love youi" "I can never get over the range of his knowledge and understanding." "Whenever talking to him, it's fascinating because he knows about everything." "If you've not got a laptop with you, he's Google." "More remarkable than his intelligence is his prodigious memory." "Stephen has never forgotten anything that he's ever read, seen, heard or done." "And that's slightly creepy." "Sometimes I think of him as the most wonderful Mr Toad." "Every day there's something new." "Poop, poop!" "You feel like he'd be running around some part of London because he's discovered some new piece of science or has read some new obscure French poet or something and he's made some application with the life that we're all leading." "He likes to pass on enthusiasms." "It's exciting to share knowledge, experience, enthusiasm, passions and I love that about him." "Do you know everything?" "I really don't know, sir." "Hmm." "He's probably the only person... who can get away with being an intellectual and being adored by the British public." "As English people, we're suspicious of intelligence, we don't like intelligent people - you snob, you pompous git, you swot, you boffin." "But Stephen Fry, you feel a warmth for him because I don't think he's..." "I've never witnessed him use his intelligence cruelly." "I think he is someone who, kind of against the odds, said," ""I know a lot more than you ever will know, but I'm not judging you for not knowing it." ""I'll share with the if you want." "If you don't, that's fine," ""cos I'm doing silly show which you can enjoy anyway but if you want to know, here."" "Now, the English language is like London." "Every time we speak it's a mongrel mouthful." "Whether we know it or not." "Of Chaucer, and Milton and Dryden and Pope and Shakespeare and Dickens and American South Central and ghetto rap and Chicago and Australian convict talk and legal and naval and military." "Every phrase we utter is the equivalent of London." "It's both vulgar and processional." "It's both grand and squalid." "And that's exactly what humans beings are, it seems to me." "Both animal and noble." "He engages people with their own intelligence and that's what crucial about him." "That's the real hallmark of a great communicator." "He awakens people's own intelligence." "When I've spent time with him," "I don't think, "I wish I had been in a film with him,"" "I think, "I wish I'd gone to university and was a bit brighter."" "If there's anyone out there who make you think" ""I should read a book, I should listen to Shostakovich," ""I should be better..."" "I think it's a joy that someone as academic as Stephen gets on the telly and is allowed to stay long sentences that no-one understands." "Because we need a bit more of that." "Hello and welcome to QI." "The world's most impossible quiz and the nearest modern equivalent to Lions versus Christians." "Let's meet my lunch." "Most hosts, if you gave QI to anyone else, you'd know they were just reading off the cards." "Whereas Stephen quite often drops the cards and just knows stuff." "What the stunning moments are, when you know he's not reading, and you know there's stuff falling out of his head." "It's unbelievable, the things he knows." "They are easily distracted and..." "Why don't you just say, "look at that"?" "No, Alan, this is a common mistake." "Only humans follow the line of a finger." "Animals look at the finger." "If you point at something, the dog won't go, what's he looking at, they look at your finger." "It's nice to find a show which seems to have a warmth underneath it." "And a genuine feeling of fun." "You do get the feeling that everyone is enjoying it." "Both Stephen and I feel fiercely about this, that not only is it a haven of a little bit of lightly worn intelligence but also of niceness." "We've had enough of people being horrible to each other, being fired from Big Brother for racist remarks, or putting two people in a documentary who hate each other and seeing what happens." "On QI, you just get pleasantness, really." "Which is the television and radio that I and Stephen grew up with." "What quite interesting material do they make their houses from?" "BOLLYWOOD SONG" "Is it dinosaur eggs?" "AUDIENCE LAUGH" "I'm almost inclined to tear up the real answer and say yes, but..." "Because I've got one." "A Chinese dinosaur egg?" "Yes." "It was a birthday present from my wife." "Every evening, Bill, four hours on the egg just in case." "In QI he is doing the same kind of headmaster character that he played in Fry and Laurie sketches for years." "It's the same kind of..."Now, boys!" He's cleverer than the rest of the boys but he's also fascinated by what they've got to contribute to the discussion." "And he's just a kind of witty gentle presence who's basically in charge." "The rules are simple." "As I don't really expect anyone to get any of the answers right, I award points for being interesting and penalties usually, if history is any guide, to Alan, for being obvious." "He's got Alan Davies, like this stupid boy you shows promise and should be encouraged and you never know how he might turn out." "Some people say it's the most homoerotic double act on television." "And I think that's probably true." "We're all going to live on Mars in the end." "Are we?" "AUDIENCE LAUGH Are you sure about that?" "Yes." "That 1950s boys' adventure book isn't necessarily the truth..." "I didn't get it from there." "I got from Channel 5." "Open your desk." "You can get Channel 5?" "That is you." "That's an Alan potato head." "I see a side of Stephen I don't normally see which is a kind of more laddish side." "He did invent the ball cock." "The ball cock?" "The ball... cock." "Sorry, I don't know why that's funny, it just is." "Sorry." "It's funny to say ball... cock." "It's quite fortunate in a way that he's very clever and very funny and lacking in confidence, because it makes him very unpretentious and very accessible." "It's a shame he lacks confidence." "Because it's given him all kinds of problems in his life." "But for those of us around him it's a boon." "I think he's made clear also in his writings, that being a very intelligent person doesn't at all absolve you from life's problems and doesn't mean necessarily that you can cope with everything life throws at you" "and it may even be a complicating factor." "Stephen's emotions and how he accesses those and expresses those is quite another matter." "I think that that huge intellect is often very much in the way." "I always worry about him, I keep saying, "you're doing too much."" "I think what he dreads most is boredom." "He dreads most inactivity." "He's always hungry for the next set of problems to solve." "In you have a brain that needs to keep going on like a machine, it does need to have things thrown at it." "It's like some sort of furnace and better that it's given other things to burn than its own self." "Is this a frantic chase to do as many things as he possibly can before..." "Before I die?" "Cross to the further shore." "Before I die of death." "Yes." "It is." "To be perfectly honest, it absolutely is." "Some people are unaware of death." "I'm constantly aware of death, or at least constantly aware of a moment just before death when I say to myself, "well bugger, why didn't I do that?" "Why do I say no, to what ever it is?"" "One of the interesting episodes in Stephen's life which is now well documented by himself as well, was when he walked out of the play in the West End that he was doing." "His disappearance for a few days." "The actor Stephen Fry who disappeared on Sunday has sent a fax to his agent saying he left the country because of stage fright." "It was interesting that the primary emotion from people was concern." "Rather than it being a tabloid titbit to pull apart, this was a real person that people had a lot of affection for who was obviously going through something very difficult." "People were incredibly concerned and that's the mark of the man." "From that point on, it seemed that he actually took control of his life." "More control than he had before." "And then again he began to make a virtue out of the things that had troubled him." "And I think that might have been a very significant moment in his life." "In recent years he did Who Do You Think You Are?" "And the mental health programme, which kind of suggests that these are not things that are now shameful for him." "These are things that he's proffered up for discussion and debate about him." "This Who Do You Think You Are about him, particularly his Jewish heritage and the people lost in the Holocaust." "This is all Jewish people who lived here." "There's the names of my great-grandparents." "So everyone who lived in this house was taken..." "Beate und Samuel." "I didn't know there was a plaque to them." "There's an inflexible honesty and openness about Stephen which I suppose he's learned to show perhaps in this middle part of his life." "We all knew they'd died and... at least believed it." "But seeing their names there." "And that fucking word, "Auschwitz," it just..." "It does something to you." "I tell you, it's... quite terrible." "He's so incredibly courageous at describing the difficulties he's had himself in so many different ways." "That programme he did, I remember watching it on television, about manic depression and the bipolar... complications." "He was so brilliant on that." "It must have helped so many people." "It's one of those great bits of television where you know as you watch it that the world is going to be changed by the fact that it's being done." "And I think Stephen already says that doctors are saying that they're getting thousands more people who suddenly understand why they're feeling like they are and that they might be able to do something about it." "When you've been depressed like that, what's your self-esteem like?" "It's absolutely zero." "To stand up and walk to the fridge is an act of unbelievable effort." "Everything that happens is because you are... a cunt." "It's because I'm a complete wanker." "Because I'm an arsehole." "You almost have a Tourette's view of yourself." "You think of death all the time." "Even if you're not feeling suicidal, you are constantly aware of death and aware of your own death and how welcome it would be." "This isn't self-revelation for the sake of self-revelation." "This isn't Big Brother." "What he was doing, when he made the programme about manic depression, was really opening a door on to something that for a long time has had a huge stigma." "Personally, I have no problem at all saying that I've been depressed and it's not something I'm ashamed of." "But there are people who do feel a sense of shame about it and it's also deeply misunderstood." "Seeing Stephen actually in the programme, there was a section of it where he was obviously suffering from the feelings there and then as he spoke." "Very sort of black state at the moment." "And would love to be somewhere else other than here, frankly." "'Usually when I feel like this, I hide away." "I can't, this time." "'For me, that numbing kind of depression comes three to four times a year 'and last a week to 10 days.'" "It's fantastic to know that you're not alone and that not only are you not alone, but someone, that kind of successful and erudite and apparently even-keeled also has this... problem." "I remember my mum and dad, or people I know who watched that documentary or happened to catch it, who normally wouldn't watch documentaries or were drawn to it because it was Stephen, and people being moved and touched by it and illuminated by it." "It was the perfect documentary in that it opened him out in complete openness and confidence and self-confidence that he could be true about himself." "It also had that Stephen thing about being very interested in other people." "He actually was keen to find out and enquire from other people what their problems were and how they also had shared in it all." "I think it was a rich brew." "It's difficult being a mummy sometimes because you feel guilty about it and you feel like you should be normal and be sensible and responsible and..." "Sleep eight hours a day." "You can be sensible." "And you are normal." "All personalities of balanced out by something." "Mum's just happens to be that her creativity is balanced out by her going to sleep." "Does it touch to let you think they think you've got a gift?" "I can't describe what that feels like." "I just..." "It's really touching." "It is, isn't it?" "I think we've yet to see Stephen's masterwork." "I have no idea what it is." "It might be an opera or a brilliant film performance, it may be a novel." "I just have no idea but I think that's still in him." "I think there's potential for great things in the documentary field that he could still do." "More writing, please and more of everything else." "It would be nice to feel that he'd be allowed to be very funny sometime as well, so the new generation can enjoy an old man behaving like an arse." "He's going to do everything." "He'll end up running the UN, won't he?" "Come on, everyone." "God knows, one wishes he would." "Quite frankly, I think he should be prime minister." "Who knows, male prostitution is always an option as well, with Stephen." "It's something he's talked about a lot." "I've tried to keep him away from that, but I wouldn't be surprised if he went down the gigolo route as well." "To be gorgeous and high and true, and fine and fluffy and moist and sticky and lovely, all you have to do is believe that one is gorgeous and high and true, fine and fluffy and moist and sticky and lovely." "I believed it in myself, tremulously at first, then with mounting heat and passion, because, stopping off for a second to be super again, I'm so often told it." "That's the secret, really." "I think this country is incredibly lucky to have somebody like Stephen and fortunately we still produce marvellous people like that." "Hugely talented and a great human being, I think." "The man is a national treasure." "He's a national treasure and he's a personal treasure too." "I share him with the nation." "Language is a creak on the stair." "It's a spluttering match held to a frosted pane, a half-remembered childhood birthday party." "It's the warm, wet, trusting touch of a leaking nappy, the hulk of a charred Panzer, the underside of a granite boulder, the first downy growth on the upper lip of a Mediterranean girl." "The underside of a granite boulder, the first downy growth on the upper lip of a Mediterranean girl." "It's cobwebs long since over run by an old Wellington boot." "Ni'night." "Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd" "E-mail:" "Subtitling@bbc.co.uk"