The author and broadcaster said he indulged in "15 years of pretty chronic cocaine taking" and said it was a "wonderful drug to calm me down".

In the interview, to be broadcast on the Sky Arts programme In Confidence in June, he also admitted to being psychologically addicted to the drug.

He said: "There were 15 years of pretty chronic cocaine taking. In my most hyper frames of mind, I found it was a wonderful drug to take to calm me down.

"I tended to take it alone at home and play word games, mind spinning. I'd do very difficult crosswords, I would spend hours on these."

He added: "I found it extremely east to stop, but it took me a very long time to get to a position where I was ready to."

The broadcaster also talked about the pressures of fame, saying he found it "exhausting".

He said: "They want an appearance, a quote, a tweet, something ... They want to touch the hem of the fame, not the hem of the person.

"It's the scale of it ... so you resort to not travelling on the Tube or walking round the street any more and going in a big car with a driver.

"And people think, "Oh, he thinks he's so grand, doesn't he?' Well, no. I'd rather walk but sometimes I just can't."

Earlier this year Fry enraged feminists with a bizarre outburst in which he claimed that women are incapable of enjoying sex.

Tracey Emin, the artist, was also interviewed for the programme, and defended her artwork, claiming it took more thought than some people believed.

She said: "If I just went found vomiting all the time and s******* everywhere and saying it's art, it wouldn't be. But the fact that I actually collate, I edit, I curate, I think about it, makes it art."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebri ... words.html

Crosswords - just say NO!

I'm sorry. I think I missed the bit where Emin actually stopped vomiting and s******* everywhere and calling it art.

"No your honour I was not drunk outside the Roxy nightclub. I was actually engaging in performance art."

I went to last year's Summer Exhibition at the RA in London and the two prints which had sold the most copies were by Tracy Emin; in each case probably making her £40,000 within a couple of days of the show opening. One was of a chimp in a spacesuit. Both prints were poorly drawn and shoddily executed but people are - of course - buying it for the name thinking it will be a good investment. I came out of the show determined to get drawing and painting again so at least it had something of a positive effect on me!

There's nothing terribly new in the interview, at least from the content of the article. He's mentioned all of that previously in an interview with Mark Lawson a number of years ago (well worth watching if you can find it, Lawson is a very good interviewer).

I misread that as Crossroads.

Did he have a Russell Crowe moment?

Me too; made a lot more sense tbh...