Stephen Fry: When I was seventeen I had already tried fourteen different jobs, married twice, fathered many many many many children, eaten a perfectly enormous quantity of food over a long time period, been weaned off six types of class A dangerous drug, given up smoking, taken it up again, given it up again, taken it up again, given taking it up and taken giving it up again and again and again and again. By the time I was twenty, alcohol had never passed my lips, yet I was a reckless and predatory alcoholic: my life was in pieces, my marriages were shattered, my children lay in ruins, I was paying alimony along the sinuses, behind the dark interior passages of the skull and through the nose. But at thirty, at thirty came the chance to redeem a bin-liner of broken promises. If I didn't take that chance what would I be? What would I become? Just another friendless acid spot on the back buttock of a weeping society. So I took it, took the chance, picked up the ball and ran, went for it, threw caution to the teeth of the gale, never looked back, just keep running, I did it. Forget the past, there's nothing there, not even memories, just a road you never travelled unwinding backwards to a place you never came from, where fruit grows on trees you never climbed, in an orchard where you lost your virginity to a boy called Timothy who died of Horlicks poisoning before you were born. No answers there...
Hugh Laurie: tephen, Stephen, Stephen, Stephen.
Stephen Fry: Yes?
Hugh Laurie: Go and have a lie down.
Stephen Fry: OK. [walks off.].
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