Comedian's memoir reveals Traitors' Stephen Fry 'minutes from death' during 90s drug binge

Ben, co-writer of sitcoms Blackadder and Mr Bean, recently revealed that doctors had told him that Stephen had been "minutes away from suffering permanent brain damage – and not many more minutes away from death”.

The revelation comes after Stephen became one of the latest contestants to be voted off Celebrity Traitors despite being a Faithful.

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Ben and Stephen have been close friends for years and Stephen starred in Blackadder when it was co-written by Ben and Richard Curtis.

Ben, 66, recently recanted a dangerously close call during a late night boozing session: "It was that time of the night when you know that it’s time to pull the pin but you don’t and instead you open another couple of bottles.

"We were drinking beer, which Stephen very rarely did, and for some reason he had some weird organic Belgian stuff which he thought we should try. We were smoking fags pretty copiously as we did in those days and, on top of that, Stephen was whacking cocaine up his nose.

"I can say this because he’s been entirely forthright about it in his own memoir and, having admitted to doing it at Buck House, doing it with me is hardly a scandal. I have never been interested in hard drugs myself."

In his new book What Have I Done? Ben said that he was set to call it a night when he realised that something was wrong with his friend.

Ben said "Had I decided to have another beer, Stephen almost certainly would have been dead in an hour because shortly after he’d called for the cab, he started to wheeze.

"His head was rolling a bit and his breathing suddenly sounded alarmingly hollow. It happened in a minute. ‘Do you want me to call an ambulance?’ ‘Yes..' He was beginning to slump in his chair."

Ben couldn't carry out a 999 emergency call as he did not know the address they were at and a barely verbal Stephen Fry couldn't tell him

Instead, they both piled into a taxi and rushed off to University College hospital.

There, Ben had to drag Stephen into the reception and alert a nurse to his friend's deteriorating state. He also had to confess about Stephen's drug taking.

Ben said that doctors later reassured him he would be alright – but that it had been extremely close. He added: "I was shown into the emergency room and he certainly didn’t look okay.

"He looked like a corpse – grey, translucent skin, seemingly no life left in his eyes, numerous tubes and wires attached to every part of him.

"It was then that the doctor told me that Stephen had been minutes away from suffering permanent brain damage.

"And not many more minutes away from death. I said I was quite sure that, given the choice, Stephen would have preferred the latter. So there you go. I saved the most celebrated brain in showbiz."

Stephen Fry was the fifth Faithful contestant to be banished from this year's series of Celebrity Traitors. His exit occurred while Jonathan Ross, who is a Traitor, managed to avoid elimination despite fellow contestants' suspicions.