From snail porridge to psychosis, Heston Blumenthal on the trauma of bipolar
In 2023, while at his home in France, Heston Blumenthal was sectioned. In Heston: My Life With Bipolar (BBC Two), a remarkably frank film in which the chef lays bare the workings of his mind, Blumenthal revisits this distressing event. But he doesn't just talk about it. Blumenthal plays himself in a reconstruction, acting out the moment he tried to fight off the policemen, doctor, and firemen who had been called there at his wife's request to take him to a psychiatric hospital.
So this is not an ordinary documentary in which the director asks questions and the subject answers them. It is a deeply personal film made with some of the creativity that made Blumenthal famous. And it is based around a central question that preoccupies him: now that Blumenthal is on medication to damp down his manic highs – as well as saving him from the terrible lows which come with bipolar disorder – will that creativity desert him?
It is an unusual focus in a programme about mental illness, but being unusual was what made Blumenthal a star in the first place. He was always a chef fizzing with ideas. Remember the bacon and egg ice cream, the snail porridge? Or the time he attempted to perfect the crispy skin on a Peking duck by using a petrol station tyre pump? In the film, he represents his 'kid in a sweet shop' mentality with a scene in which sweets rain down on his head. But by 2021, two years before his diagnosis, it was evident that something was very wrong. The film includes footage of a BBC interview in which, responding to a simple question, he launches into a mile-a-minute riff about the evolution of humanity.
According to the programme, 1.3m people in the UK have bipolar disorder. It can take years to secure a diagnosis, and the care can be dangerously lacking; Blumenthal met Natalie, the mother of 22-year-old trainee paramedic Rebecca McLellan who died by suicide after failing to get the right support. He now has his condition under control, although the medication he takes has slowed his speech and he has a fragile air, no longer the swashbuckling chef.
In the grip of a manic episode, Blumenthal believed he could communicate telepathically with his dog and solve the world's water crisis. His wife, Melanie Ceysson, felt compelled to have him sectioned after he began having hallucinations, believing there was a gun on the table in front of him. 'Bipolar had progressed to a point where I was a danger to myself before anyone raised the alarm,' he says now. 'Perhaps my reputation for energy and creativity made people less likely to question my manic highs.'
There is no attempt to sugarcoat Blumenthal's story and the effect it has had on those around him. In perhaps the programme's most brutally honest moment, he sits down with Jack, one of his children. Jack says that dealing with their father could be horrible. 'We just wanted a relaxing conversation with our dad. You didn't want it. You didn't want to know anyone's thoughts,' Jack says. Was that entirely down to Blumenthal's illness? Top chefs are notoriously driven. But he is clearly in a better place now, and able to shine a light on the subject in a way that could be helpful to others.
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