In retrospect, licking the Taj Mahal was a sign things weren't right

Celebrity chef and Fat Duck culinary genius Heston Blumenthal on the relief of being diagnosed with the devastating bipolar that nearly stole his sanity... and could have cost him his life

- By Sally Newall

HESTON Blumenthal is reflecting on the behaviour that led to his life-changing diagnosis in November 2023. “I licked the Taj Mahal,” he tells me. “We were being shown around and I had a little look over my shoulder and licked the wall.” He adds, unprompted: “It didn’t taste of anything.”

The incident occurred during the celebrity chef's honeymoon with third wife Melanie Ceysson, who he married in March 2023, and was an innocent, if bizarre, precursor to the massive breakdown and suicidal thoughts that were to follow.

What did his new wife think of this unorthodox sightseeing, I wonder?

Heston, speaking to me — a fellow person with bipolar — via Zoom from their home in Provence in Melanie’s native France, goes to get her. “I thought, ‘That’s just Heston,” she tells me. “You don’t create all that he’s created without tasting everything.”

And in fairness, her husband became world famous for his culinary creativity — serving such dishes as bacon-and-eggs ice cream and snail porridge at his three-Michelin-starred restaurant, The Fat Duck, in Bray, Berkshire, now in its 30th year.

But following the India trip, Heston’s behaviour became more extreme.

“I was spending money I didn’t have, buying very expensive bottles of wine and putting them on credit cards,” the 59-year-old continues. “I was talking to birds and digging holes in the soil with my hands to see how hot it was.”

He forbade Melanie, 38, from killing any insects: “I wanted to save life... I sat in the living room, and there were all these flies landing on me. I thought I was Lord of the Flies.”

Feelings around his own life, however, were darker. He became fixated with death, stopped sleeping and was having delusions.

In his recent BBC documentary — Heston: My Life With Bipolar - he recounts how he became convinced he could change the world, giving everyone access to clean water. He hallucinated a gun on the table, but refused to see a doctor.