The Fry Chronicles

by Stephen Fry

I lived for one thing and one thing only. C12H22O11.

So sugar gave me life, but it exacted a price – slavish adherence. Addiction to it and an addiction to addiction in addition.

C is for Cigarettes … for Convict … for Cundall … for Corporal Punishment … for Common Pursuit … for Cessation All they that love not tobacco and boys are fools Christopher Marlowe

I was at a dinner party many years ago, sitting along from Tom Stoppard, who in those days smoked not just between courses, but between mouthfuls. An American woman opposite watched in disbelief. ‘And you so intelligent!’ ‘Excuse me?’ said Tom. ‘Knowing that those things are going to kill you,’ she said, ‘still you do it.’ ‘How differently I might behave,’ Tom said, ‘if immortality were an option.’

se non è vero, è ben trovato – even if it isn’t true, it’s well founded.

Work can be an addiction like any other. Love of it can be a home-wrecker, an obsession that bores, upsets, insults and worries those close to you. We all know that drugs, alcohol and tobacco are Bad, but work, we are brought up to believe, is Good. As a result the world is full of families who are angry at being abandoned and breadwinners who are even more angry because their hours of labour are not sufficiently appreciated. ‘I do it for you!’ they cry. While it may be true that work puts meat on the table, everyone around them knows that hard workers do it for themselves. Most children of workaholics would rather see less money and more of their parent.

Success has a dozen parents and failure is an orphan,