Stephen Fry's desperate plea after vanishing for three days while suicidal

Someone in the UK goes missing every 90 seconds but Stephen Fry tells Mirror readers what they can do to help heartbroken families this Christmas

An empty chair at the dinner table, an unopened present under the Christmas tree - for some 170,000 British families who have a loved one who has gone missing - Christmas will be tough this year.

Actor Stephen Fry, 67, who is the Patron of charity Missing People, says that it’s a topic ‘close to his heart’ after he went missing for three days in 1995 while he was starring in a West End play.

In a video recorded for the Mirror, Stephen says: “Will you be home for Christmas? Help us be there for those who aren’t. Some 170,000 people are reported missing each year in the UK - for them and their loved ones life can be lonely, scary and uncertain - I know this from my own experience. Right now people are searching for children, fearing for their safety, searching too for mums, dads, brothers, sisters and grandparents who suddenly feel very vulnerable. For them this Christmas will be tough.”

It's almost 30 years since Stephen disappeared for three days into the run of Cell Mates at the Albery Theatre, London after the pressure became too much. Best known for his television roles in Blackadder II in 1986, Jeeves and Wooster in 1990 and presenting quiz show Qi from 2003 to 2016, Stephen Fry recalls only coming home because he realised how worried people were.

Stephen, who fled to Belgium, revealed in his documentary Stephen Fry: A Life on Screen: “My luck began to fizzle out. I just couldn’t take being in the play, or being in London. I saw rows of newspaper headlines, ‘Fears for Fry’ type thing.

"And I stared at it in complete disbelief. They all are worried that I’ve committed suicide. That’s the awful thing. I can’t believe I worried people so much. When you feel you can’t go on, it’s not just a phase, it is a reality. And I would have killed myself if I didn’t have the option of disappearing.”

The actor also went missing when he was a teenager and told the Diary of A CEO podcast that he didn’t have an easy time growing up. “I was a disruptive, deeply difficult, screwed up child,” he says. “Socially, I never fitted in, and felt fitted in, because I was bad at all the things that were valued as a child."

“It was at boarding school. I was sent away at the age of seven. My parents were on the east coast in Norfolk and I was sent to Gloucestershire on the west coast. To some people it sounds a bit cruel to send a child 200 miles away. But that was what happened, as far as I was concerned. My brother had gone, and everyone at that school was in the same situation.”

This Christmas, Missing People will be a lifeline to those people missing and their families, but the charity needs donations and gifts people leave in their wills to keep going. “Please join me and donate today to help someone find support and safety, visit www.missingpeople.org.uk/mirror and give what you can,” Stephen Fry adds. “Your donation will help to answer helpline calls from missing children and from adults in crisis and to provide support workers and counselling to help families cope.”