1 week ago
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Heston Blumenthal's restaurant The Fat Duck has been voted one of the world's best ever - but he has no interest in watching an on-screen version of someone like himself. The high-profile chef refuses to watch US show The Bear which is based around the fictional exploits of a chef.
Talking in an explosive interview, he admitted that the twists and turns of the plot could be enough to trigger a mental health episode. The 58-year-old, who was sectioned in 2023 after living with undiagnosed bipolar disorder for years, explained to The Times: "I haven’t watched it because it might trigger a bit of a bipolar thing in me."
Although he received his ADHD diagnosis in 2017, there had been signs that he was also bipolar, dating back to years before that. While running his Michelin-starred restaurant in Berkshire, which he launched in the mid-1990s, he was often working 120-hour weeks.
He was also sleeping just 20 hours per week, while constantly bombarding his team with ideas - even in the middle of the night - and making potentially risky financial decisions, all "classic" textbook symptoms of bipolar. Admitting his "expensive" business choices meant the restaurant was always "on the edge", things eventually came to a head.
"It took more than a few extreme moments of manic behaviour for my wife to put me in hospital," he confessed. "It got to the point where if she hadn’t done something about it, I wouldn’t be here."
The Heston's Feasts star added: "I’m an accountant’s nightmare. I would buy something, then work out how to pay for it afterwards."
On reflection, he grew to realise that his adventures with cooking had been "masking" his bipolar episodes.
However, when his wife Melanie, whom he wed in 2023, started to struggle with the erratic patterns of "manic highs and lows", and realised she couldn't predict his behaviour, he was sectioned.
"The psychiatric hospital was basically like a prison. It was quite miserable," the award-winning Channel 4 chef shuddered.
He is stabilising his mood with medication and currently feels much better, but will be waiting for a while before risking watching an episode of The Bear.
That's despite the fact that he knows multiple people who were involved with creating the show.
Talking on BBC Newsnight on Tuesday, he explained: "There’s a couple of the big chefs that I know, friends of mine, who have been involved in the consulting of it, so it must be pretty accurate.
"I’m hoping that one day I’ll be able to watch it, just at the moment, it’s too soon."
English (US) ·