Stephen Fry (b.1957)
Some people never live down their public school years; only a choice few spend years trying to live down to the louche, rebellious image they cultivated at the time.
Old Uppinghamian Stephen Fry was so marked by his schooling that it inspired two of his books: an autobiographical novel, The Liar, and a memoir proper, Mohab is my Washpot. Both were attempts to exorcise the demons of the dormitories.
As a teenager, Fry had an extraordinary store of arcane knowledge, a sharp verbal wit and a fondness for innuendo: rather like his adult persona, in fact. He was famously expelled from school and embarked on a brief career as a thief and fraudster before he finally reaped the benefits of a boarding school education by surviving a spell in the jug.
Fry was a cut above the common criminal - he had stolen four copies of Thackeray's The Four Georges in his study - so it is as well for Scotland Yard that he decided to devote his talents to comedy and literature.
Like many a public school man, his urbane exterior belies a fizzing mass of insecurities. His superior veneer was no protection againt the jibes of the critics and, eventually, a very public breakdown.
Fortunately, he recovered, got in touch with his Jewish roots, bought his own biplane and visited Peru in search of a stuffed bear. In 2003 he released his first film as director, Bright Young Things, an adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies: a book which some find too too arch and knowing.
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