COMIC OPENS UP

When everyone else is going to bed, my brain goes 'It's just you & me now' ...art saved me

- BY SARA WALLIS TV Columnist

Johnny Vegas has ADHD, a disorder that makes his mind work in overdrive, zooming from one crazy random thought to another like someone channel-hopping on TV.

If we want to know how that feels, here is a rundown of what might go through his brain at any one time...

He says: “I'm driving a tugboat, the next thing I'm having my tonsils out, then I'm thinking I should learn to cook, then I wonder why we've no poisonous snakes in England.

“If I went to night school could I mend a pinball machine? How many seagulls would it take to lift me?”

It sounds hilarious, but also exhausting, so it’s little surprise that it led to a meltdown that kept him out of the public eye for a year while he got help with his mental health.

In the two-part Channel 4 documentary, Johnny Vegas: Art, ADHD And Me, he tells how his love of art brought him back from the brink.

Johnny says: “I went into meltdown, I couldn't function. It seemed insurmountable. I had to get professional help. This has been the most difficult part of my life.

“But the art saved me.”

The 54-year-old comic had been forced to sign off sick and halt all his projects, including his debut art exhibition.

After a year off, he finally returned to complete a striking public art installation in his hometown of St Helens, Merseyside, and has opened up about his struggles with ADHD.