Tony Slattery’s numerous health battles – from tragic cocaine addiction to bipolar disorder and depression

Stand up comedian Tony Slattery has died at the age of 65 following a heart attack, his partner of 40 years Mark Michael Hutchinson has revealed.

While further details of the actor’s heart health are yet to be revealed, he often spoke out about his challenges with multiple other health difficulties over the years.  

The actor, best known as a star of Channel 4’s Whose Line Is It Anyway?, fought addiction to cocaine and alcohol, and was open about his mental health diagnoses of bipolar disorder and depression.

In the years before his passing, he spent his days away from the limelight following a public admission of the difficulties he’d faced throughout his life.

In 2019, the comic — a contemporary of Dame Emma Thompson, Sir Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie at the University of Cambridge — revealed to interviewers that he’d battled addiction and had suffered sexual abuse as a child.

He admitted that his lowest moments, he was taking 10 grams of cocaine and downing two bottles of vodka each day to cope with haunting memories of being raped by a priest at eight years-old.

In 2020, Slattery revealed his troubles and drug habit had led him to go bankrupt. 

He told the Radio Times that his ‘fiscal illiteracy and general innumeracy’ as well as his ‘misplaced trust in people’ had also contributed to his money problems. 

He said: ‘If you’re not born into money, you don’t know when it’s going to stop, you think it’s streak of luck. I really enjoyed working but all work no play takes its toll.

‘The overwork, no holidays, no taking a break, eventually you snap, you try to replace it with something. In my case, it was cocaine.

‘Then the booze came along, then the depression set in… I was drinking two bottles of vodka a day and doing 10 grams of coke.’

After quitting his drug habit, he sent it off for toxicology report, which found he had actually been snorting 5 per cent cocaine, cut glass and — to his horror, human and animal faeces.

Talking about his experience with the drug, he said: ‘It’s not fun, I wouldn’t recommend it, the devil’s dandruff, it heightens makes you uninterruptible, irrational, disinterested.’ 

In the early noughties, Slattery met with a psychiatrist, who diagnosed him with bipolar disorder, a mental health condition that affects your moods, which can swing from one extreme to another. 

Speaking of the condition, which affects more than 1million Brits, he said: ‘Bipolarity is like autism or any disease, it’s a huge spectrum, it’s everything in between.’

He added: ‘The isolation that comes with bipolarity and depression, you alienate people. They want to like you and love you, if you don’t answer messages that’s all they can do.’

His partner Mark Michael Hutchinson, who met Slattery when they starred in a 1986 West End musical, admitted in a 2020 BBC documentary about his battle with alcohol and mental health that looking after him is a challenge. 

He described Slattery as ‘always being on edge’ and ‘erratic’, saying he’s seen ‘dozens’ of versions of him over the years.

In the BBC documentary, Slattery explained he suffered regular bouts of paranoia.

The actor recalled throwing pieces of electrical equipment in the Thames, convinced they had been tapped and said he would do it so often, the police had to be called.

‘He kept mentioning that he was being spied on,’ Hutchinson explained, adding the actor had, at times, has been a danger to himself.

Slattery also appeared in a 2006 BBC Two programme The Secret Life Of The Manic Depressive to speak about his condition.

He said: ‘I rented a huge warehouse by the River Thames. I just stayed in there on my own, didn’t open the mail or answer the phone for months and months and months.

‘I was just in a pool of despair and mania.’