The diagnosis around which Heston: My Life With Bipolar revolves is so recent that, when we meet him, the doctors are still adjusting his medication. It was only 18 months ago that police, firefighters and a man with a syringe arrived at his front door to have him sectioned at his wife’s request. “She had to do it,” he says. “Or I wouldn’t be here.” He woke up in what he would learn was a psychiatric hospital and stayed there for two months before returning home with his new medications as one of the 1.3 million people in the UK living with bipolar disorder.
Heston is Heston Blumenthal, of course, who made his name as the “molecular gastronomist” who invented snail porridge, bacon-and-egg ice-cream, sardine sorbet and a plethora of other extraordinary dishes that made him and his restaurant the Fat Duck in Bray famous, kickstarted a career as a TV presenter and turned him into a world-renowned brand.
