Stephen Fry opened up about the terrifying moment a 'skinhead' attempted to attack him at a football match for 'being gay'.
The 64-year-old actor was attending the FA Cup at Wembley when the incident occurred.
Speaking to the Out To Lunch podcast, the former QI presenter said: "I remember once going to the FA Cup in Wembley and, as I was walking in, there was this furious face suddenly loomed right in front of me.
"It was a skinhead, and it was, ‘You f***ing poof, I’m going to f***ing get you,’ like that."
Stephen admitted he thought the person was joking around at first and responded to the threat with a 'that's right, dear'.
"He went crazy and he was coming towards me and his friend started to pull him back, and then other people told him to ‘go away, go away, go'," he said.
"And I realised that person, his eyes were genuinely filled with hate, and he would have quite happily nutted me and stamped on my head and that is a shock."
"It was distressing. I was kind of trembling for hours afterwards… it really was a shock."
Homophobic hate crimes occur at a shocking amount, with the numbers rising over the pandemic.
From January to August 2021, at least 14,670 homophobic hate crime offences were recorded, compared with 11,841 in the same period of 2020 and 10,817 in 2019.
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Stephen previously discussed his sexuality in a clip he made for the charity Proud2Be.
He explained: "[I’m] not proud because I think being gay is better than being anything else but I think it’s a wonderful thing to be in love and you follow your heart.
"Desire is wonderful and you follow whatever gland it is that controls your desire."
He continued: "I would never apologise for being born the way I was and for feeling the way I do."
The Blackadder star struggled to keep his sexuality a secret when he was a teenager at public school.
He was once asked about when he first acknowledged his sexuality, to which he quipped: "It all began when I came out 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'."
In 2015, Stephen tied the knot with his husband Elliot Spencer.
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