Habit cost him 'hundreds of thousands of pounds'

Stephen Fry has revealed that he once took cocaine at Buckingham Palace.

The QI host also confesses to taking the Class A drug in both Houses of Parliament, Windsor Castle, Sandringham, Clarence House and BBC Television Centre

He makes a list of places he snorted the drug in the new volume of his memoirs, More Fool Me, which was published yesterday. It also includes many of London’s top hotels and private members’ clubs and the offices of The Times and The Daily Telegraph.

Fry writes: ‘I take this opportunity to apologise unreservedly, to the owners, managers or representatives of the noble and ignoble premises and to the hundreds of private homes, offices, car dashboards, tables, mantelpieces and available polished surfaces that could so easily have been added to this list of shame.

‘You may wish to have me struck off, banned, black-balled or in any other way punished for past crimes; surely now is the time to reach for the phone, the police or the club secretary.’

He also admits: ‘Some of you will be reading this in horror, not because your are easily shocked but because you thought better of me than this.’

Fry gave little details of any particular details, but does describe nipping to a toilet to snort a line of coke while relaxing in the Commons Smoking Room after lunch with an unnamed MP.

Discussing whether his drug use was a medical addiction or a self-destructive habit, Fry says he spent hundreds of thousands of pounds ‘sniffing, snorting and tooting away’ cannabis over a 15-year period.

And he says: ‘By the end of the 1980s I would no more consider going out in the evening without three or four grams of cocaine safely tucked in my pocket that I would consider going out without my legs.’ Yet he could spend four months in Norfolk writing The Liar without even thinking of the drug.

He also reveals that he was pulled over by police for drink-driving the night before recording the final episode of Blackadder Goes Forth – with three grams of cocaine in his pocket. He tried to surreptitiously leave the condom holder containing the drug in the van that drove him to the police station to be charged – but as he left the station a ‘helpful’ officer ran after him to return the container, which they had never thought to open.

• More Fool Me by Stephen Fry is published by Penguin,priced £25. Click here to buy from Foyles for £15.

Published: 26 Sep 2014