One of Britain’s best-loved television and radio personalities, Stephen Fry wowed crowds earlier this month at the Queen’s Jubilee.
The massive event took place on June 4 and was thrown at Buckingham Palace as part of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations.
While the likes of Nile Rodgers, Elton John and Mimi Webb also proved hits at the event, so too did the great Stephen Fry.
The presenter has been a close confidant for some royals in the past, so his appearance made sense. But it’s fair to say he’s had a whirlwind time of things in the last few years.
Life-saving surgery after cancer scare
At the beginning of 2018, Fry announced that he was recovering from an operation to treat prostate cancer.
The surgery had involved the removal of his prostate and 11 adjacent lymph nodes.
He would later describe the cancer as aggressive and said that early intervention had saved his life
Fry added that he had to get used to the idea of the diagnosis, saying: “I went around saying to myself, ‘I’ve got cancer. Good heavens, Stephen, you’re not the sort of person who gets cancer.’
(Image: 2014 AFP)
“I know it’s an old cliche but you don’t think it’s going to happen to you.”
He urged men to get their PSA [prostate specific antigen] levels checked with a doctor.
“I generally felt my life was saved by this early intervention, so I would urge any of you men of a certain age to get your PSA levels checked,” he said.
Homophobic attack while watching football
The former host of QI has been a lifelong football fan and was a previous board member at Norwich City.
But an awful experience at a match saw him approached by a “skinhead” in a homophobic attack at Wembley. Stephen explained the situation earlier this year.
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.
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“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.”
Blasphemy case
The documentary maker has been open in the past about his atheism, but one Irish person was left so angry by some of Stephen’s comments that he took a blasphemy case against him.
While appearing on an RTÉ television show in Ireland called ‘The Meaning of Life’ with presenter Gay Byrne, Stephen was asked what he would say to God (if there is one) at the pearly gates.
“Bone cancer in children, what’s that about? How dare you? How dare you create a world where there is such misery that’s not our fault?” he said.
“It’s utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?
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“We have to spend our life on our knees thanking him? What kind of god would do that? Yes, the world is very splendid, but it also has in it insects whose whole life-cycle is to burrow into the eyes of children and make them blind. They eat outwards from the eyes.
“Why did you do that? Why? Why did you do that to us? You could easily have made a creation where that didn’t exist. It is simply not acceptable.”
That interview took place in 2015, but in May of 2017, it was announced that Fry, along with broadcaster RTÉ, were under criminal investigation for blasphemy under the Defamation Act 2009, following a complaint from a member of the public about the broadcast: the case was dropped after Irish police (known as Gardaí) confirmed that they had not been able to locate a sufficient number of offended people.
Ireland has since removed the article on blasphemy from their constitution.
Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
