What's Normal Anyway? Celebrities' Own Stories of Mental Illness Read online

  Years later though, in 2003, I got another perspective on it when I was doing the telly series Who Do You Think You Are? and I met a couple of nurses who had treated my mother at Barnsley Hall, who were now in their late eighties, nineties. And how the hell they were so clear I don’t know, because they said:

  ‘Oh yes, we remember your mother, she was so jolly.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Yes, yes, she was always singing and playing the piano.’

  ‘What? I had no idea she played the piano.’

  ‘Yes, she did.’

  So at the end of that I said: ‘What do you think was wrong with her?’

  And one of the ladies said: ‘Oh, I think she had what we would now call bipolar.’

  And, well, you know . . . definitions. Having found out as much as I can over these last ten years – that’s relevant to myself, not just from curiosity – diagnoses change, words change, don’t they? So it’s very difficult to know exactly what went on, but from what I’ve read and heard since it fits bipolar better than schizophrenia really. Looking back on it now I think, yes, my mother did have bipolar disorder.

  ***

  What hadn’t happened . . . I certainly hadn’t gone through life thinking my mother had a very bad problem. I certainly hadn’t gone through my life, at all, thinking: ‘I wonder if this will clobber me in any way or other?’ But I have to say – although I wouldn’t necessarily blame anyone – that looking back now you’d think that some doctor or somebody might have said: ‘Your mother did what? She was where? Ah. Oh. Well, we’d better keep an eye on you then.’ But the suggestion that there was some flaw there that might have been passed on genetically never cropped up. So I was not aware, and I don’t think anyone else was aware on my behalf, as it were, that I had any problem until about 2000, very late on, when I was about sixty. It wasn’t ’til I had what one would have called in the old days a ‘nervous breakdown’, which in fact was a heavy dose of clinical depression (or at least that was certainly what the doctor said then) that I actually thought: ‘There’s something wrong with me here.’

  I’m aware, thinking back – which is the best I can do in a sense – of a couple of little incidents which suggested that there was a bit of wiring starting to get loose in the lead up to the breakdown. Because, you know, it wasn’t crazy, it was, sort of, disorientation. One time I was doing a voice-over in the morning, then I had to go somewhere else for a meeting, and then go back again. And I couldn’t remember having done the voice-over. And the guy said: ‘You did that this morning’, and I said: ‘No, I didn’t’, and he had to play it back to prove it to me. And I was, you know: ‘Oh fuck, what happened there then? Is it memory? Is it just something switching off?’ And I had a couple of those. I think the other one was when I had to drive down to Newquay to give a talk and, again, I was suddenly: ‘Have I done the first half?’ It was almost like you had concussion or something like that.

  Something similar also happened to me when I was in Costa Rica and I was tipped overboard out of a white water raft type thing. And I was wearing a helmet and I didn’t hit my head or anything – as far as I know – but I actually lost about an hour or so. I remember being in the boat, being in the water, and reaching up and somebody grabbing hold of me. Then the next thing I knew I was sitting in the front of the boat, paddling along quite happily, and the producer who was with me said:

  ‘Are you okay?’

  And I said: ‘I don’t think I am actually. Where am I?’

  ‘You’re in Costa Rica.’

  ‘Am I? Are you sure?’

  Eventually the only thing that got me round to accepting this was when we stopped and went to this little café by the river and I said: ‘I’m just going to go for a walk for a few minutes.’ So I got my binoculars and wandered round and started seeing toucans and things. And I thought: ‘Ahh! This is not the Heath . . . you’re in Kansas now!’ So that’s what brought it back. So I had quite a few little fades in and out of focus for a while.

  Then . . . I don’t remember the exact chronology of this . . . well, you don’t write it all down do you? So it’s fairly muddy in a way. But I do remember that first breakdown all too clearly. You know, all those clichés like: ‘You don’t know what it’s like until you’ve had it’, came flooding in. And I couldn’t believe it, I just could not believe it, and anybody who’s had the full whack, I’m sure, would say that. It’s not a matter of just: ‘I’m not feeling too good’ or ‘I’ve lost a bit of enthusiasm.’ It’s cut off, cut off, you’ve been unplugged. I was just absolutely inert, I just really couldn’t move. I’d just lie on this couch day after day basically. You really are catatonic: you won’t do anything, you can’t do anything, you really are down and out. And it was a terrible shock obviously.

  And I went to the GP and I couldn’t talk. Laura, my wife, went with me and I was just sitting staring at the floor and I couldn’t put two words together. I’d just turned into some sort of awful vegetable. And he said: ‘You’ve obviously got clinical depression and it looks as bad as I’ve seen.’ They were the words the doctor used. But at least we knew then, I suppose, that there was some sort of label on there, which was that I was prone to clinical depression, which was the first time that words like that had been anything to do with me as a patient. I don’t recall anything else very much about the visit except some pills, some standard antidepressants or whatever, SSRIs or something. And there was a bit of a therapy attempt, which, of course, at that point, was with an NHS therapist. And it was fine, I didn’t mind going, I didn’t mind chatting, but I didn’t find it . . . I don’t know if I found it particularly helpful. Undoubtedly the biggest ‘flaw’, in inverted commas, was the fact that you’d be very lucky if you went once every ten days, or two weeks, and they would say: ‘Look, I’d love to be able to see you every couple of days but I can’t, it’s not going to happen.’

  The other thing you soon learn is that certain things are going to be part of your life. The ideas and the jargon – ‘you’ve got this, you’ve got that’ – was one of them. Although bipolar, manic depression, didn’t enter into it at that point, it was never mentioned then, or if it was . . . actually there was one time . . . it was suggested once, in the early days, by a consultant on the NHS. I remember one session with her, very early on, when she said something like: ‘We ought to look at the bipolar thing as well, let’s have a think about that.’ But, if you like, I almost dissuaded her because my concept of manic depression, as most people’s concept of manic depression would be, was: you have your terrible downs, and these are balanced by ups that are so extreme that you think you can do all sorts of things you can’t do, etc. And, you know . . . it’s dangerously manic.

  And I had an example because we knew some people up the road and the guy had been certified as bipolar. And his manic phases, of which I’d seen one or two, had been classically extreme. It was the early days of the Internet so he’d been on there buying all sorts of crap – he’d bought a house somewhere up in Scotland – and at one point he left his wife and was then seen advertising on the Internet or something. And God knows what. But he did the lot. And it didn’t take you two seconds to say: ‘Uh-oh, he’s crazy.’ And then the rest of the time he’d be in bed and not move – and I’d recognise that bit – and in between times there might be a bit that’s okay. So that was my example of bipolar.

  So when the consultant said: ‘So how are you doing now then?’

  And I said: ‘I feel really good actually.’ And I did, I felt really good at that point.

  And she said: ‘Not too good, I hope?’

  And I said: ‘Erm . . . oh, bipolar you mean? No, I’m not too good. Manic is not . . . like that.’

  And I instanced this friend of mine and said: ‘I know what happens to people, they jump off buildings and think they can fly and that sort of thing.’ So they have this image of being real crazy.

  And I said: ‘I’m not that. I am not that.’

  So therefore, during the n
ext ten years, I had expunged the idea of manic depression because I had a certain idea of it and – aside from this woman – nobody else had taken it at all seriously either.

  Aside from the jargon, the therapy, the pills, the next thing that becomes a part of your life is the question: ‘Are you going to need to go into a hospital at some point or another?’ Which I did. I went to the Priory first – the North London Priory – and everything about the two or three hours that I spent there was awful, from the minute I drove through the gates and along the path, through the bloody great gardens. You know, it looks like a stately home or something and it immediately reminded me of where my mother had been – instantly – which didn’t help. And then it just gave me the creeps. I was registered or something and left in this room, this big room, and Laura stayed with me, and it was: ‘Somebody will be back soon.’ And I really freaked out. I was cowering in a corner, saying: ‘Please, please don’t leave me here, don’t leave me here,’ and she was saying: ‘We’ve got to do this.’

  Nobody turned up for about two hours and when they did they said:

  ‘Oh, there’s a phone call for you.’

  And I said: ‘But nobody knows I’m here.’

  And they said: ‘Oh, it’s a newspaper.’

  And I said: ‘You’ve got to be bloody joking, I’ve only been here a couple of hours and somebody in this place has leaked that fact to the papers.’

  You know, unbelievable. It happens, but I did think that was a bit quick. So I just couldn’t . . . there was no way . . . I had to get out of that place. So I ended up in another hospital in town. (It’s a private one too, but that’s another issue, I’ll come back to that.) And to cut a long story short I had to go in there about three times during a ten-year period.

  ***

  Then there was the therapy – both in and out of hospital – which, among other things, set me off knowing what shrinks did. And, like I said before, it’s such classic stuff: that you lacked mother love, that you lacked attention, motherly attention and support, and the person who was supposed to be looking after you ran away. You could . . . it’s like a comedy sketch of what the basic things are that are going to bring you down, and that’s a classic one obviously. The possibility of a genetic thing was interesting because that didn’t get mentioned much, the therapist immediately homed in on the deprivation of mother love. I mean . . . I don’t know whether it’s true or not true, whether it’s valid or not valid, whether it’s the reason or just one reason, I haven’t a clue. But he’s going to go through every aspect of that.

  It’s a whole other subject this therapy stuff. And you don’t have to be in a private hospital to get the therapy but I’ve seen these things going on in them. It borders on the comic, it borders on the grotesquely amusing, I’m afraid. I don’t wanna say it doesn’t work but they stick the word therapy on anything, you know:

  ‘So, are you going to art therapy today?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you going to dance therapy later?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you got social therapy?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Well, it’s playing dominoes actually.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘We’re going to do gardening therapy!’

  ‘We’re going to do birdwatching therapy!’

  ‘We’re going to be doing sitting-and-watching-David-Attenborough-therapy!’

  ‘Something-else therapy . . . blah-blah therapy.’

  They’re all given a name. What’s the fashionable one at the moment? Oh God, that self-orientated thing, erm, it is awareness? Mindfulness, that’s the one. You’re supposed to go to that therapy. Also music therapy, that was a good one, a lot of people seemed to like that. Which is basically about the same as at a mother-and-toddler club, basically the same as at infant school. They leave a pile of percussion instruments – I could have lent them some – and there’s usually a teacher who pretends to play the piano, but can’t really, and everyone’s meant to go like that and sort of make a noise and let it all out and that sort of thing. And the same when you do your art therapy, you paint something and then somebody will interpret it: ‘Mmm, yeah, this is you gloomy, a big cloud, oh dear, it’s tough isn’t it?’ ‘No, it’s actually raining.’ I’m loath to knock them because I know a lot of people seem to like them but, as you’ve gathered, I just got more and more cynical about those sort of things and I didn’t find them any use whatsoever. Aside from, occasionally, the naughty use of finding a couple of kindred souls, giggling most of the way through.

  And, of course, looming over them all is cognitive behavioural therapy. Well, I don’t know, I’ve been to quite a few of those and I can honestly say, I’m afraid for me – and I don’t want to knock it – that I don’t know what it’s about, I really don’t. I wish I didn’t feel like this, it’s one of the reasons I’ve been a bit cautious of talking about things, but every time somebody stands up there and does a pie chart and starts writing things on it I . . . I just cannot get with it at all. If you were to believe the papers – particularly the Daily Mail – there will be somebody there saying: ‘CBT saved my life’, or whatever, so I’ve got to accept that it does. But I also . . . I also can’t help thinking: ‘Well, yes, but it’s very cheap for the NHS or whoever too.’ It’s a pretty basic thing, particularly if it’s group therapy. But then again, to some people the group is important, I’ve seen it work. You know, I’ve been to so many of these sessions at the hospitals, there’s always somebody nagging you. And you go along and sometimes it’s just like a good chat with a bunch of people and if you get the right group it can be very interesting.

  I don’t know . . . the trouble is you always feel you shouldn’t criticise something if you can’t come up with something better and I can see that. But I think if you’re of a certain mind and have a certain take – and you have a facetious sort of streak as I tend to do – then you’ve had it once you start giggling and you’re given the nuts to hold or something like that. You think:

  ‘Oh God almighty, I can’t do this!’

  And it’s: ‘How interesting, what are you feeling now?’

  We had an American lady as well, which seemed strangely appropriate:

  ‘What do you feel now?’

  ‘Um, I’m a bit bored really.’

  ‘Interesting, interesting.’ That was her catch phrase.

  There were two other guys at the back and we were like naughty pupils:

  ‘Oh, that’s interesting, interesting.’

  Oh God. You know, I just want to write something there, I think there’s a sitcom or something in it.

  ***

  How did it affect my work? Luckily, during that stage – because this coincides mainly with my wildlife career – it didn’t affect me very much professionally, because I was very fortunate that one of the producers I worked for was very sensitive about the problem. I think she had probably had problems herself at some point or certainly knew people who had. And I remember her very well. A couple of things. One, when we had finished the series we were working on she sent me a card, because she knew I wasn’t in very good shape, saying: ‘Don’t worry about it, the job is still here, if we have to delay the next series it doesn’t matter, it’s okay.’

  And another one was, I was supposed to go to Kenya and do some Christmas special and I could feel myself getting really edgy about it. And, again, she stepped in and said: ‘Do you really wanna go?’

  And I said: ‘Ahh, I dunno.’

  And she said: ‘Look, I don’t think you should because you’ll be stuck out there and you won’t have proper medical attention immediately. It hasn’t really been sorted out properly and it doesn’t matter.’

  And a lot of people will say: ‘Go ahead and test yourself!’ But I can honestly say – and this is general advice in life – if you don’t really wanna do it, just don’t do it, and you’ll be amazed at how much better you’ll feel. You know: ‘I don’t have to go and do that! Great!’ Anyw
ay, so there was that degree of sympathy, which was so important at the time. God yes, it was a relief. But I can see exactly why there are jobs where people think: ‘I mustn’t let them know, I mustn’t let them know.’ It just depends on the attitudes of who you’re working for and, in this particular case, at that particular time, I had sympathy from that one producer.

  There was only one time when I ever really broke down in public, which was when I was supposed to give a talk to these people who worked on oil rigs . . . that’s the only time I really had to stop, you know? But if we’re looking for the brighter side of things, it showed that you only have to be in a room with half a dozen people and you find that at least a couple of them will have had this sort of experience, because the organiser of the event said:

  ‘Do you have problems with depression?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  And he said: ‘I thought so, I recognised that instantly. Don’t worry about it, it’s okay, it doesn’t matter. It’s only a bunch of people who probably don’t know what you’re talking about anyway!’

  And that was partially true because, although I’d been on television all year, I had a room full of people working on the oil rigs all year! And I said: ‘Has anybody seen Springwatch? . . . No?’ Oh, Christ.

  The irony, I suppose, of my journey – for want of a better, less pretentious, word – is that what has got me into trouble is not depression. It wasn’t the depressive side, it was the manic side. Although I didn’t know it was a manic side then, I didn’t know I had a manic side. And that, I think, is not a very good comment on some of the people who were supposed to have been treating me or noticing that. The word bipolar – manic depressive – had not been applied to me or suggested to me, either by anybody else or myself, for years and years, since that NHS consultant I saw very early on. And, like I said, I dismissed it because of the exaggerated image of manic depression, which sounds like you’re a total lost cause.