Heston Blumenthal: My wife sectioning me is the best thing to happen to me
TV chef Heston Blumenthal says he believes that his wife sectioning him is the 'best thing' that could have happened as he pushed for awareness on him living with bipolar disorder.
The restaurateur, 58, who presented Channel 4 shows Heston's Fantastical Food and Heston's Feasts, has taken on a role as official ambassador for Bipolar UK, after he was diagnosed with the mental health condition in November 2023.
According to the NHS, a person can be detained, also known as sectioning, under the Mental Health Act (1983) and can be treated without their agreement as they 'need urgent treatment for a mental health disorder and are at risk of harm to themselves or others'.
Blumenthal opened up about his bipolar symptoms on BBC One's morning programme BBC Breakfast, saying he 'hallucinated a gun on the table', was 'talking about suicide', and 'thought the TV was talking to me'.
He added: 'This wasn't all the time, but it was getting greater and greater, and being sectioned was the best thing that could happen to me.'
Blumenthal said it 'was really difficult' for his wife, French businesswoman Melanie Ceysson, who he married in 2023.
He said: 'She had to decide how I would take it and … my response was, I embraced it, but I never thought I was going to be diagnosed as being bipolar, (and) I thought at the time, the highs and the lows were normal, but they weren't.
'And they weren't right for me, and they weren't right for the people around me that … cared for me.'
Blumenthal said that 'there was a 20-year period where (my imagination) was running riot in a positive way', noting his out of the box creations he made while helming the three Michelin-starred restaurant The Fat Duck and making coming up with recipes for bacon ice cream and triple-cooked chips.
'I've also got (behaviour condition) ADHD, and the combination of those two – they compound things,' he added.
'So I don't know how much of my bipolarism, let's say, contributed to all the creativity or not.
'And even though the lows are low, you can have mixed, mixed moments as well. Someone asked the other day: If there was a button I could press to turn off my bipolar – would I press it? No, I wouldn't, because it's part of me.'
Blumenthal says when he looks back to before he was sectioned, and realised that 'a lot of things I did were slightly bizarre or quite extreme, and they weren't, they weren't right'.
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He added: 'This is a really big thing, because every person … that has bipolar, there was a big group of people around them that have to live with it, which is a big thing.
'So I thought that everything was was normal, only since the medication, and coming out of hospital, and I've done a lot of work on myself, I can look back and see how extreme things got.'
Blumenthal said he was in a 'lucky position to give something back' as he becomes the ambassador for the charity, and hopes to change perceptions in his new role.
According to Bipolar UK, bipolar is an episodic disorder characterised by sometimes extreme changes in mood and energy which has the highest risk of suicide of any mental health condition.
– Samaritans are available on 116 123 or at samaritans.org/how-we-can-help/contact-samaritan/ or email jo@samaritans.org.
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