Adam Ant: I'm Bipolar

Stuart Goddard is one of the most gifted - and most troubled - pop stars this country has ever produced. The artist known as Adam Ant, name checked these days by a swathe of influential new bands from Kaiser Chiefs to the Bravery, has agreed to talk to me for an hour - the first interview he has granted since the tumultuous events of 2002 to 2003, when he was arrested and hospitalised in bizarre circumstances, not once but twice. But he will only talk on the phone.

Highs and lows: Adam Ant prepares to travel to New York with his band in 1981; and outside court in 2002

There was considerable comment made during Ant's annus horribilis about his appearance. The dandy highwayman and swashbuckling pop pirate behind such original and inventive number-one hits as Stand and Deliver and Prince Charming had lost his looks.

So is Ant, responsible for some of the most arresting images in pop, uncomfortable about being seen? "No, this is just fitting in with my timetable," he says. "I'm having a few days out of London. It's the most expedient way to do the interview. Normally I'd do it face to face. I don't have a problem with that."

He sounds by turns lucid and weary, the result, perhaps, of the medication he's taking for depression. Some things he instantly recalls, others he doesn't remember at all. His cover version of Neil Diamond's America, a charity record for the New York fire-fighters, doesn't ring any bells, nor does his 2002 single Big Trouble, a snippet of which was played by Nicky Campbell on BBC Radio 2. "No," he says, vaguely, "that wasn't me." Then there was the improbable re-recording, in 2003, of Stand and Deliver, re-titled Save the Gorilla, with royalties intended for the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund (Adam has loved gorillas since childhood). "Yeah, that was the last time I went into a studio," he says, more brightly. "I think what's going on with gorillas is pretty bad. The fact is that you can buy gorilla meat in London any day you want it."

Ant's problems began in December 2001 when, during a Christmas party at London's Regency Rooms, he had to be dragged from the stage after he refused to leave following a set of strange renditions of his 1980s hits.

It got worse. One Saturday afternoon in January 2002, he walked into the Prince of Wales pub in Kentish Town wearing a combat jacket and a white cowboy hat. Some locals made fun of his outfit and tauntingly whistled the theme from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Taking the credo "ridicule is nothing to be scared of" (from Prince Charming) too far, he later returned to the scene and threw a car alternator through the pub window, hitting a man on the head. He then pulled out a replica Second World War revolver and threatened to shoot approaching staff.

He was arrested, charged with intent to cause fear of violence and criminal damage, and released. But by the Monday night, a psychiatric team had come to his flat, and he was sectioned. "I've been abducted," he told a reporter. "The whole thing's a conspiracy." After appearing at the Old Bailey in October 2002, he received a £500 fine and a 12-month community rehabilitation order.

But he wasn't out of the woods yet. In June 2003, after several months in and out of hospital being treated for depression, Ant found himself once more in a secure ward. According to witnesses, after he hurled stones at windows near his Primrose Hill home, Ant headed off to the nearby Curly Dog café where he "ranted about children" before pulling down his trousers and curling up in a foetal position in the basement and saying he wanted to sleep. When the police arrived, he refused to come out.

"I just had a bad day, really," Ant says in flat cockney tones, when I ask about the incident. "I'd been in hospital, I'd come out and I was just very unwell."

In July 2003, Channel 4 aired The Madness of Prince Charming. With his assistance, it detailed Ant's history of mental illness (at 21, he was diagnosed with Bipolar Affective Disorder), anorexia and suicidal tendencies. It was one of the station's most-watched programmes that year. "It was quite a heavy thing to do," he says of the documentary. "But it got the best reaction of anything I've ever done. Everyone I meet says I'm really glad you said that, because someone in my family has got a mental illness."

I ask him if he thinks torment and creativity go hand in hand. "I don't know. I'm a rock and roll singer. I'd feel a bit pompous saying creative people are prone to that. What came out of the documentary is that everybody has got someone in their family who has either suffered in silence or has experience of the illness, and they never get their point of view aired. And the point I wanted to make," he says, more assuredly now, "is that most people think pop or rock or whatever is a bowl of cherries, and it ain't. It can be very taxing, very exhausting. It chews 'em up and spits 'em out."

Ant's experiences in the music industry have been far from happy. His first band, Bazooka Joe, had their thunder stolen during a gig in November 1975 at St Martin's School of Art by support act the Sex Pistols. When Adam and the Ants emerged during punk, they were reviled for their S & M imagery, and Adam became the whipping boy of the press, who regarded him as inauthentic. In 1980, Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren lured the original Ants away to form Bow Wow Wow, who borrowed Ant's brainwave - a Burundi-drum approach to rock rhythm.

Even when Adam and his new band of Ants became the hottest pop act since T.Rex, racking up nine hits in 18 months and enjoying 91 weeks on the charts in 1981 alone (a record unbeaten for 15 years), the critics remained largely unimpressed.

Yet, in retrospect, Adam Ant was an extraordinary pop star. In these formulaic times, when idiosyncrasy is discouraged, even "cutting-edge" new acts such as Bloc Party, who draw heavily on the post-punk period from which Ant sprang, lack any of his sense of adventure and wayward invention.

Having craved celebrity for so long, he found the demands of 1980s superstardom punishing, although, as he now admits, the relentlessness of his schedule had its benefits - and not just the endless supply of women. "Work helped me out. It was a lifesaver, to feel you're doing something constructive."

The decline of his fame in the late 1980s hit him harder. "People are really funny when it comes to admitting the game is up," he says. "It was a difficult time for me."

It was no less difficult when, in 1987, his biological father Les (he was brought up by his mother and stepfather Tony) was found guilty of gross indecency on a junior. The tabloids had a field day.

Then in 1989, following a move to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career, he found himself pursued by a stalker, Ruth Marie Torres, whose erratic behaviour - poisoning his fish pond, trying to kill his dogs, shouting obscenities while naked in the street outside his house - sent Ant over the edge. He suffered a breakdown and admitted himself to Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre. When he got out, he moved in with aspiring actress Heather Graham (following previous relationships with Amanda Donahoe between 1977 and 1981, and Jamie Lee Curtis in 1983), but when that relationship fell apart he moved back to London - and the attentions of yet another stalker. "They must like me," he says. "I've no idea why. They just come along out the blue and they find out where you live. And then the fun starts. Then they start messing around with your life."

The only good things in Ant's life these past few years have been his daughter with Lorraine Goddard, Lily, born in 1998, and his music. He is currently working on some "very personal" new songs, for an album with the projected title Fist in the Skull.

Meanwhile, he has been writing his autobiography. It's an incredible story. Surely he must look at the Pete Doherty of the Libertines and think he's a lightweight. "When you have to go to the Old Bailey," he says, "that's a different ball game. They're the big stakes."

He's more impressed by Michael Jackson, with whom he appeared at the Motown 25th Anniversary special. Ant had to follow Jackson's now-legendary debut live performance of Billie Jean. "He did the moonwalk and everything," he recalls with a gasp, "and completely knocked the audience out. And when he was finished it was like [adopts macho US TV host voice], 'And now, from London, England, Adam Ant!' I went out thinking, 'F•••, I don't want to follow that.' "

Does he sympathise with Jackson's plight today? "Well, yeah, having to go to court every day, you feel shitty and you look shitty, and yet you've still got to do this thing. The problems he's got he's going to have to get himself out of. It's very easy to be judgmental about people in that situation. But I think the guy's a genius."

How about Adam Ant, is he a genius? "No, I have to work too hard to be a genius." Do people judge you? "Well, no one's come up and said, 'You're nuts,' or anything like that. People tend to keep their distance."

Courtesy of Paul Lester of The Telegraph

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Jeremy Brett: I'm Bipolar

Brett suffered from bipolar disorder (commonly known as manic depression), which worsened after Joan Wilson's death. Joan died shortly after Brett finished filming Holmes’ “death” in “The Final Problem.” He took a break from filming the series, but when he returned to filming in 1986 he suffered a nervous breakdown caused by his bipolar disorder aggravated by grief and the stressful shooting schedule. During the last decade of his life, Brett was hospitalized several times for treatment of his mental illness, and his health and appearance had visibly deteriorated by the time he made the later episodes of the Holmes TV series

.

Although he reportedly feared being typecast, Brett appeared in forty-two episodes of the Granada series Sherlock Holmes. There were plans to film all the Holmes stories, but Brett died of heart failure at his home in London before the project could be completed. Brett's heart had been damaged by a childhood case of rheumatic fever, and was apparently further weakened by the various drugs prescribed to control his manic depressive episodes, particularly Lithium salt, and by his heavy cigarette smoking. He died at the age of 61 on September 12, 1995.

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Frank Bruno: I'm Bipolar

On September 22, 2003, Bruno was taken from his home near Brentwood in Essex by medics, assisted by police officers, under terms of mental health legislation. He was taken to  Hospital in, where he underwent psychological tests. He had been suffering from depression for several months beforehand. The psychologist Professor Cary Cooper expressed the opinion that the end of Bruno's boxing career, the breakdown of his marriage, and the suicide of his former trainer George Francis in 2002 all contributed to his condition. On October 9, 2005 he admitted that his cocaine use, which began in 2000, contributed to his mental health problems

Media coverage of the situation raised controversy, with the media being accused of insensitivity, in particular The Sun, whose headline in the first editions the next day read Bonkers Bruno Locked Up. Second editions retracted the headline and attempted to portray a more sympathetic attitude towards Bruno and mental health in general. They also established a charity fund for the victims of mental illness, although some mental health charities condemned The Sun's latter action that day as being grossly cynical in the light of the former. By 2005 he was able to appear on BBC Radio as a guest expert at a boxing match, as well as appearing on television again.

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Ray Davies: I'm Bipolar

 

Davies has described himself as "openly manic-depressive". He has had a tempestuous, love-hate relationship with younger brother and Kinks guitarist Dave Davies that dominated the Kinks 30 year career as a band. His compositions and talent as a performer are universally hailed within the music industry, but he has maintained a career-long reputation for being fiercely independent and iconoclastic, resulting in a decades-long pattern of conflict and alienation within the music industry.

He was quoted in 1967: "If I had to do my life over, I would change every single thing I have done."

In 1983, Davies had a daughter, Natalie Rae, with then-girlfriend Chrissie Hynde (of The Pretenders).

On January 4, 2004 Davies was wounded when he was shot in the leg while chasing thieves who had snatched the purse of his companion as they walked in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana.

I love the Kinks music John

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Stephen Fry: I'm Bipolar

 

Fry has spoken about his struggle to keep his homosexuality secret during his teenage years at public school, and famously practised a celibate lifestyle for 16 years. He once famously commented, "I suppose it all began when I came out of the womb. I looked back up at my mother and thought to myself, 'That's the last time I'm going up one of those.'" (Fry admits in his autobiography Moab is My Washpot that he "borrowed" the line from a friend at university.) Fry currently lives in London with his long-time partner, Daniel Cohen. Fry met Cohen after piecing his life together following a breakdown in 1995 due to bad reviews for his performance in the play Cell Mates. He also has a second home in West Bilney near King's Lynn, Norfolk.

Fry has since spoken publicly about his experience of bipolar disorder, and has made a documentary about other people's experiences of the condition. [1],[2]  Due to be screened in the UK in August

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Stephen Fry talks for first time about suicide bid

 

Stephen Fry has spoken in depth for the first time about his battle with manic depression. The actor and comedian attempted suicide after walking out of the West End play Cell Mates in 1995.

He recounts his darkest days in a new BBC2 programme, The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive.

"Eleven years ago in the early hours of the morning I came down from my flat in central London," he tells the documentary.

"I went into my garage, sealed the door with a duvet I'd brought and got into my car.

"I sat there for at least, I think, two hours in the car, my hands on the ignition key. "It was, you know, a suicide attempt, not a cry for help."

But Fry did not go through with it - instead he fled the country, a disappearance which made headlines.

He explained: "I drove to the south coast and took a ferry to Europe. I just knew I couldn't be at home. I really believed I would never come back to England. I couldn't meet the gaze of anyone I knew.

"But after a week I secretly returned to England, to this hospital, and to a doctor telling me I'm bipolar.

"I'd never heard the word before, but for the first time at the age of 37 I had a diagnosis that explains the massive highs and miserable lows I've lived with all my life.

"There's no doubt that I do have extremes of moods that are greater than just about anybody else I know."

In the documentary, to be screened this autumn, Fry interviews other celebrities who suffer from manic depression or bipolar disorder.

Star Wars actress Carrie Fisher, Hollywood star Richard Dreyfus and British comedian Tony Slattery are among them.

Slattery, who found fame in TV show Whose Line is it Anyway? also suffered a breakdown. He tells the programme: "I rented a huge warehouse by the River Thames. I just stayed in there on my own, didn't open the mail or answer the phone for months and months and months.

"I was just in a pool of despair and mania." Fry also speaks to ordinary people about their struggle with the devastating condition, which affects four million people in the UK.

BBC2 controller Roly Keating said: "Stephen talks about his own experiences with incredible candour and bravery.

"I think he felt he could use his prominence to make a difference. It is a totally misunderstood condition which a lot of people don't like to talk about because of the taboo around mental health.

"He was determined to use two hours of prime-time TV to talk about nothing else. "Being Stephen, he does it with humour and empathy."

 

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Pete Doherty: I'm Bipolar

Pete Doherty suffering from manic depression?

Thursday March 2nd, 2006 at 2:15 pm by HeatherHoneypot