‘The best actors reveal something of themselves when they act,’ he said.
I hadn’t thought of that. Playing comedy characters is so often about externalizing something, demonstrating the absurdities of other people. However, I never forgot what Niall said, even though I wasn’t ready to reveal anything intimate about myself on stage or film any time soon.
Being away filming was like being in a bubble. I was never alone, and there were constantly new experiences to savour: sailing into Venice as dawn rose, visiting the Acropolis in Athens, travelling to the top of the island of Santorini on donkeys …
So when I finally returned home the reality of what had happened finally hit me.
29
4.48 a.m.
It was impossible to sleep. Anxiety stopped me from falling asleep; depression woke me up. The recurring nightmare of being smothered in my own bed visited me over and over again. Every night I could feel myself being pushed into the pillow, my breathing stopping. Every night I told myself it was a dream, but this was a nightmare in which I was lying in bed awake. It terrified me.
In my diary at the time I wrote, ‘I dreamt that I was lying awake in my bed and someone was pushing me hard into the pillow. It really felt like someone was there. I can understand why people believe they’ve seen a ghost; I’ve felt one. Then I saw a big python squeezing the life out of me and that’s when I woke up. My nightmares always follow the same pattern: lying there frozen with terror and powerless because I don’t know that I’m asleep.’
At 4 a.m. I would wake in a cold sweat. Sarah Kane’s last completed play before she committed suicide was 4.48 Psychosis, the time she frequently woke up in her depressed state. Many people who suffer from depression confirm early morning is the worst time. At 4 a.m. you are totally alone. There is no one to call. Your friends or family tell you, ‘Call me any time,’ but at 4 a.m. you don’t feel you can. It’s dark outside; there isn’t even the sound of the birds to keep you company. So I would lie there until the curtain edges grew light and the room took shape. It was not just the terrible elemental sadness I felt, but fear. Fear of death, fear of life, fear of love, fear of everything. This went on for six months. My diary entries at the time make for bleak reading.
Sunday 17/11/2002
The day started with me walking down to Primrose Hill planning my own death. If only I could get my hands on a gun, I thought. Not enough pills in my house, I don’t have a car so I can’t do the exhaust/hosepipe thing – thinking about that, I don’t have a hosepipe, and my oven is electric.
Monday 18/11/2002
Today the stone in my heart turned into a rock.
I was back at Shepperton filming scenes for Cruise of the Gods we had lost through the boat running aground. News reached me that my ex-girlfriend had a new boyfriend. The tears started. I went outside. Suddenly the crying was uncontrollable. I stood out in the car park, bent double with grief. I crawled back to my dressing room and lay on the floor, sobbing. I thought this was it. I would never stop crying. I would never be able to get up. What I had been thinking had been confirmed. I had ruined my life. Because of what had happened to me and what I’d done, the girl I loved had rejected me. I could never love again. I was unlovable. How could I ever love anyone again, when I had to carry around this poison inside me? How could I give that to anyone else and break their heart just like I had broken hers?
I had never experienced this level of pain or emotion before. It was terrifying. I was shaking. It was like I was having a nervous breakdown or going mad or both.
Tuesday 19/11/2002
This was a day I’d never thought I’d see. Tuesday the 19th of November came as a complete surprise. Last night I genuinely could not envisage surviving until the morning. But here it was, cold and dark but a new day nonetheless. A new life started today. It was back to Shepperton, and the vague embarrassment of acknowledging the faces of all those people who had seen or heard me cry or at least heard about it smile at me in that supportive way. I swear my eyes were still bloodshot from crying. My face couldn’t hide what had happened. In my dressing room James Corden had left a present of a Peter Kay live DVD. He had heard me crying yesterday and wrote a note saying he hoped this might cheer me up. What a wonderful friend he is.
Thursday 28/11/2002
My life is a living death. Yes, I wrote Little Britain with Matt, yes, I went to the gym and yes, I went to Hampstead in the evening to see Graham Linehan, but I wasn’t there. All I could think about was how I wanted to die. If she can’t love me then I don’t want to live. What has surprised me is this impulse to destroy myself hasn’t mellowed at all as the days have passed. It’s really scary. I can’t trust myself to be on my own. Back in my flat, I lay in bed and watched the hours go by on my clock, thinking how many sleeping pills I have in my house.
Saturday 21/12/2002
I couldn’t get out of bed. Then when I did I sat with porridge and cried and cried unable to cope with the pain. I silently screamed then looked out the window to David’s Baddiel’s house and thought tonight I will go into his living room and hang myself from his roof supports. I had to be serious this time. Really to do it. Edgar was having a party later. I could say goodbye to everyone there.
‘I won’t see you in a while,’ I could say. All I needed was some rope.
Wednesday 25/12/2002
It’s Christmas Day. I am lying in bed in my sister’s old room at my parents’ house and I am weeping. I had been close to tears all day. In the cab on the way over this morning I wanted to turn back, thinking I couldn’t face my family while I am in this state. When my mum sat next to me on the sofa to show me some photographs she had given Nanny of the family I could feel the tears welling up. I’m crying now. As quietly as I can. Because I can’t begin to tell my parents what’s wrong. Because everything is wrong.
Monday 30/12/2002
4.30 a.m. was when I woke up this morning. Forty minutes later than yesterday. That still left me hours and hours to stare into the abyss until daylight came. Matt came round at 10 a.m. and we got straight to work. Thank God for work. It is a momentary escape from this nightmare.
I became obsessed with the Nick Cave album The Boatman’s Call and listened to it every night. It was so full of sadness and longing, and every song seemed to help define what I was feeling, especially the opening track on the album, ‘Into My Arms’. I chose it for one of my Desert Island Discs years later. Never has a song been so full of longing …
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms
And I don’t believe in the existence of angels
But looking at you I wonder if that’s true
Night after night with no sleep. I was so tired during the days they were like a walking death. Round and round in my head spun the same thought: I can’t change the past. The past means she can never love me. I can’t change the past. The past means she can never love me. I can’t change the past …
After a while those close to me realized something.
I was going mad.
Suicide was all I thought about. I needed an end to the pain.
Somehow I got through some additional work Matt and I had taken on to pay the bills before Little Britain was filmed. I sleepwalked my way through some unfunny performances on the yoof TV series Born Sloppy, quite possibly the worst Channel 4 programme ever produced. Once again we reprised Rock Profile with some new characters, though somehow it seemed like the law of diminishing returns was operating. Matt’s brilliance as a performer dragged us through it, but I was barely able to crack a smile let alone raise one.
Wednesday 1/1/2003
I slept a few hours and then stayed in bed hiding from the world. When I did get up I started crying uncontrollably and had to lie on my sofa.
‘I can’t handle this I can’t handle this I can’t handle this,’ I kept saying to myself.
I looked at the sleeping pills again, th
ought about writing, ‘When the person you love rejects you for what you are, how can you go on?’ on a piece of paper and leaving it in a prominent position but didn’t. Then I ran a bath, took out the longest sharpest knife from the kitchen drawer, and lowered myself into the water. I ran the knife along my wrists and throat, just drawing blood. The determination wasn’t there. But the pain is too much to live with. Wanting to die has always been in me. At the moment it’s winning. No one need take the blame if it beats me tonight or tomorrow or the next day.
Monday 10/2/2003
It’s 4.46 a.m. on Tuesday morning and I could not be more awake. I have given up trying to sleep and am sitting on my sofa in my pyjamas cold from sweat.
Wednesday 19/2/2003
The end of the story is this, me hanging from the rafters.
The torment was unbearable today. I wasn’t working. I lay on my bed and cried and cried and started to think about my dead body hanging there and thought this is why I don’t like being emotional. I kept on thinking is it today that I die? Why not now?
Friday 28/2/2003
Torment. Despair. Pain. In alone, writing Little Britain. I cried in the morning. Then again at lunchtime. My body buckled in my kitchen. It was frightening. I thought will I ever come out of this? Is this the moment I don’t come back from? When the grief overcomes me and I finally surrender to it and find refuge in madness.
During a yoga class later I started composing suicide notes in my head and imagined myself dead hanging from the door with my belt around my neck.
My friend Mark Morriss came over in the evening. He played me his new Bluetones album, which on first listen sounded very strong, and told me about how his stepdad used to be violent towards him and his mum.
‘Sometimes I think the pain of life is unbearable,’ I said.
One night, after seeing Catch Me If You Can with Edgar Wright near his home in Islington, I let my feet stray near the edge of the Tube platform. As the train thundered out of the tunnel I thought about how easy it would be to step in front of it. I imagined my body bouncing off the front of the train, then torn into a bloody mess on the tracks. It was horrifying. I stepped back just as the warm wind of the train whooshed past me.
Saturday 1/3/2003
11.30 p.m. Just tried to hang myself. From the door of my living room with my belt. Hung there for about a minute in the dark. Wrote a suicide note first:
‘To everyone who loves me, I can’t bear the pain any more. I can’t get through another day or another night. I am so sorry. David.’
I stared at the dark stained wood of the door as the belt tightened around my neck and my head started to buzz with pain. But I knew I didn’t really want to die, I just didn’t want to live. I took my weight again with my feet and sat down on the floor. Earlier I had come close to stepping in front of a train. I am in total despair.
That night I realized I needed some serious help. Going to see a psychotherapist once or twice a week was not enough. Bruce Lloyd suggested going to the Priory.
Monday 3/3/2003
‘The torment is making you mad,’ said Bruce after I told him what had happened. ‘That combined with the fatigue is preventing you from getting better. You need more help than I can give. You need to go to a hospital.’
The Priory is a psychiatric hospital in Roehampton just outside London which became as famous as some of the people it treated for depression or addiction. If I stayed there for a while I would be safe from trying to kill myself, as if you are on suicide watch you are checked all through the night. There I would also be given medication to alleviate my depression and perhaps more importantly to help me sleep. Sleep. Something I had not experienced properly for nearly a year. Caroline Aherne once said to me, ‘I think depression is mainly caused by a lack of sleep. If you can’t sleep at night you’re going to be in a very down mood all day, and if you’re in a very down mood all day you can’t sleep at night …’
Most of the symptoms of depression support this. Tiredness, being unable to concentrate, losing your appetite. So both the depression and the insomnia have to be treated. I had hoped I could think my way out of depression with Bruce’s help. I was wrong. As I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t think straight. I was obsessing about the past and deeply anxious about the future. As a result I was unable to live in the present, and all those simple things that bring me pleasure, such as a nice meal, seeing friends or writing comedy, became joyless.
However, you can’t just turn up at the Priory even if you are suicidal – you have to be referred by a doctor or psychotherapist and they need to have a bed for you.
Another nightmarish week passed.
Tuesday 11/3/2003
4 a.m. and the fear is on me. If hell is in your mind then I have been to hell.
At any moment I knew I might get the call from Bruce telling me they had a place for me. The call finally came on Friday. Matt and I were at the BBC filming a sketch for Comic Relief, a spoof of Blankety Blank that Peter Serafinowicz had written showcasing his astonishing impersonation of Terry Wogan. Matt and I were cast opposite each other as Hi-de-Hi! cast members Su Pollard and Ruth Madoc respectively. The cast was uniformly brilliant. Simon Pegg was an anarchic Hitler-obsessed Freddie Starr, Nick Frost an incomprehensible Willie Rushton, but I was dismally unfunny. And painfully thin too. I was down to twelve and a half stone, which for someone six foot three inches tall is underweight.
After filming the sketch, Matt and I went to Myfanwy Moore’s office at the BBC for a meeting about the forthcoming filming of Little Britain, which was now only weeks away. There I finally received the call, and stepped outside the room to take it.
‘David?’
‘Hi, Bruce.’
‘I’ve got you a place.’
‘Oh thank you so much.’
‘And most importantly you’ll be under the care of Dr Mark Collins. He’s the best man there.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Pack your bag and get there as soon as you can. Dr Collins will come round and see you tonight. Good luck, David. Call me if you need anything.’
‘Thank you. I will.’
So I had an announcement to make. Despite Matt and I being in the last stages of writing a series that could change our lives for ever, I needed time off. Maybe weeks. Maybe months.
I ended the call and stepped back into the office. Trembling, I turned to face Matt and Myf.
‘As I’m sure you both know, I’m not well, and haven’t been well for quite a while. I need to go away and try and get better. The psychotherapist I’ve been seeing has secured me a place at the Priory and am going there tonight …’
Matt mumbled something about his own problems, but Myf was more sympathetic. ‘Oh, you poor thing. Yes, Lovely,’ she said. Myf often called you Lovely, which made you feel a little bit lovely. ‘Of course. You should go. Let us know if you need anything and let me know when you feel ready to return to work.’
So I boarded a train packed with commuters at Waterloo, got off at Barnes and walked to the Priory …
30
‘Don’t fall in love here’
In 2003 the Priory’s fame had not reached epic proportions. It was just somewhere people went when they were fed up with life but didn’t want to die. I knew I was edging closer and closer to killing myself, but ultimately I knew that would not be the end of my story. An actress friend from Attachments, Sally Rogers, said to me, ‘You’re a nice middle class boy who wants to get his homework in on time. You know you mustn’t kill yourself.’
I wouldn’t have gone to the Priory if I wasn’t bothered about my homework, this being the scripts to the first series of Little Britain.
‘Hello, I’m Dr Collins, but you can call me Mark,’ said a portly man with a kind voice. To my relief he wasn’t dressed in a long white gown. I was sitting on my bed in a room at the hospital, an old country house with acres of grounds set behind high walls. It wasn’t nice though; it’s a psychiatric hospital. ‘Bruce has told me a little
bit about what has brought you here. But I thought you might like to tell me in your own words …’
I did, and when I finished he said, ‘Don’t fall in love here.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well lots of vulnerable people come here and they start relationships. It’s not a good idea. You would be replacing one dependency with another.’
He prescribed me some antidepressants and I was given some pills to help me sleep. When I put my head on the pillow in the gloomy pictureless room, my mind still raced, fighting the pills as much as it could. Every hour or so the night nurse came in to check I hadn’t tried to hang myself with my shoelaces.
I had arrived on a Friday night, and there wasn’t much happening over the weekend – many of the patients went home on Saturday – so the following morning I trundled around the largely empty building alone. Rob Brydon lived nearby in Richmond and invited me out for lunch and to play football with his three lovely children in the park. In the dining room that night there were just two others: a young woman with only one arm and a man who looked so ill with depression that his skin was grey. Being among other depressed people gave me perspective. I immediately felt better off than either of them. When it filled back up on Sunday night, I realized I was worse off than some. There were people who had had nervous breakdowns at work and were still there two months later, funded by their company’s health insurance. Which is why the Priory is regarded by many as some kind of holiday camp. Who wouldn’t want a few months away from the stresses of their life?
I didn’t tell my mum and dad I was there. Not only did I not want my mum to worry – she was always such a worrier – at the time I couldn’t find the words to tell them why I felt this way. My sister Julie spotted that I didn’t come on and take a bow with the rest of the cast that night live on television after the Blankety Blank sketch played out on Comic Relief. She came to visit me, which was very kind, and relayed to our parents where I was but that I was all right.
Camp David: The Autobiography Page 24