Heston Blumenthal reveals surprising early warning sign of psychotic mania – he noticed it years before he was sectioned

Celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal has revealed road rage was an early warning sign he had bipolar disorder, which began years before he was sectioned following an acute manic episode in 2023. 

The illness caused the father-of-three to suffer hallucinations that led him to see phantom guns and believe the television was talking to him. 

He was eventually admitted to a psychiatric hospital for three weeks, where he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Now, speaking to the High Performance podcast, Blumenthal, 58, said since leaving hospital he had been ‘looking further and further back’ through his life for early signs of the condition — which affects 1.3million Brits.

‘When I was in my late teens, I had a good level of road rage,’ he recalled. 

‘I’d get really angry at people in the car and think I was Knight Rider [the 1980s action series featuring David Hasselhoff].’

He also recalled that upon starting at his famous restaurant, The Fat Duck, he was able to survive on very little sleep — and suspects this was another potential early warning sign of bipolar disorder.

‘For the first 10 yrs of the Fat Duck I was working 120 hrs a week, sleeping 20 hrs a week…was that bipolar?’ he said. 

‘When you’re really tired. You break through that tiredness you behave differently.

‘In that altered state imagination and creativity flows.’

Speaking last year, Blumenthal said his collection of ‘extreme highs’, hallucinations and suicidal thoughts were all worsened by sleeping for just an hour or two each night.

Doctors said the sleepless nights and the state of excitement had put a potentially lethal stress on his body.

‘Eventually, (not sleeping) was a big cause because I wasn’t getting the repair I should have been getting,’ he said.

Around one in every 100 people will be diagnosed with bipolar disorder at some point in their life and the condition is characterised by periods of extreme manic highs and depressive lows.

Blumenthal was diagnosed with bipolar one, which features at least one manic episode. 

Bipolar two involves more regular episodes of depression than bipolar one.   

The mania experienced by patients includes feeling ‘high’ and overactive, and hallucinations and delusions often feature.

Blumenthal credited an interest in martial arts before he became a chef with helping keep his bipolar disorder under control.

‘What kept it at bay, my bipolar and ADHD, was I did between 15-20 yrs of kickboxing, ran a club for a short period of time,’ he said. 

‘So I was training a dozen hours a week with kickboxing which creates a really good framework to anchor the bipolar and the ADHD.’

In another, revealing part of the latest interview, he described the details of the terrifying hallucinations that gripped him prior to his hospital admission. 

‘I’d be looking, researching YouTube clips, could be on evolution, theoretical physics,’ he said.

‘But I’d be looking at short films, and a lot of them, the algorithms would throw things up. So I thought it was the television was reaching out to me.

‘Only after I came out of hospital did I think it was scary. It was like, I can’t believe I thought that.’

Recalling his wife, entrepreneur Melanie Ceysson, having to ask doctors to admit him for psychiatric treatment, he said he remained incredibly thankful for the ‘really difficult decision’ she made.

‘My wife arranged it so I had a couple of policemen turn up to the house, five firemen, a doctor and an assistant and they basically committed me. I woke up in a psychiatric hospital,’ he said.

He added: ‘For her to be able to make the decision must have been really difficult. To make the decision to have me sectioned. 

‘I say thank you all the time, [she’s a] superstar. It couldn’t have gone on any longer, put it that way, or I would have done damage to myself.’

Blumenthal also shed light on the effect that psychiatric medication has had upon his state of mind and famous creativity. 

‘I’m definitely much more calm. I would like to return to the great elements of my manic imagination,’ he said. 

‘I don’t want to lose that. It’s just been suppressed at the moment from the medication.’

He added that he was only taking about 10 per cent of the drugs he was given shortly after his diagnosis.