THE MELTDOWN

Nineteen months ago, Heston Blumenthal was sectioned after his behaviour became dangerously manic. Doctors said the 59-year-old culinary genius was on the brink of death. He opens up about the breakdown that changed everything

- BY JANE MULKERRINS

IN HIS sun-filled kitchen, Heston Blumenthal is pointing to the patio doors where, 19 months ago, a policeman arrived late one night to section him. He remembers briefly thinking it was odd for a French cop to be at the back of his house in Provence with its sprawling garden of cypress trees, lavender and vines, surrounded as it is by a high wall.

“But I also thought, ‘He seems like a really nice man,’ so he came in, we sat down on the sofa and I showed him my OBE [Order of the British Empire honour awarded to the celebrity chef by Queen Elizabeth in 2006 for services to British gastronomy] and my coat of arms. I was not thinking, ‘What the f*** is a policeman doing in my home?”

A second officer arrived — at the front door this time - followed by five firefighters and a doctor, who told Heston they were taking him to hospital. He refused. “I started to fight them, but they pinned me down on the sofa, two on each arm and one at the front. And then I saw, out of the corner of my eye, the man in the white coat pulling out a big syringe and I thought, ‘Just let it go.”

The intervention, in November 2023, followed months of increasingly manic behaviour from Heston, who would talk at speed for hours without pausing, became obsessed with Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein and theories of evolution, was barely sleeping and had begun to believe the television was talking to him.

He was hallucinating not just images but also sound and touch. Shortly before he was sectioned he believed there was a gun on the table, drew a picture of it, showed it to his wife, Melanie, and told her he was thinking of using it on himself.

“I was a danger to myself,” he says today.