TV chef and restaurateur Heston Blumenthal said his wife sectioning him was the “best thing” to have happened as he opened up about his bipolar symptoms. The 58-year-old, who was diagnosed with the condition in 2023 after being admitted to hospital, told BBC Breakfast how he once “hallucinated a gun on the table”.
This wasn’t all the time, but it was getting greater and greater, and being sectioned was the best thing that could happen to me, he said. Blumenthal, who runs several award-winning restaurants, including the three Michelin starred The Fat Duck in Bray, Berkshire, has now become an official ambassador for Bipolar UK.
According to charity, the mental health condition is an episodic disorder characterised by sometimes extreme changes in mood and energy which has the highest risk of suicide of any mental health condition. I laughed out loud after receiving a message from a woman who told me that during a manic episode she thought the TV was talking to her, Blumenthal, who also has ADHD, said.
The reason I laughed out loud was because I experienced the same thing. The chef said it was really difficult for his wife, French businesswoman Melanie Ceysson, who he married in 2023.
She had to decide how I would take it and … my response was, I embraced it, but I never thought I was going to be diagnosed as being bipolar, I thought at the time, the highs and the lows were normal, but they weren’t. And they weren’t right for me, and they weren’t right for the people around me that … cared for me.
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