Richard Bacon has opened up about his long-running struggle with alcohol addiction – admitting he’s sleep-deprived and reliant on heartburn tablets and vitamin injections to cope with the fallout from heavy drinking.
Richard was famously just 18 months into his dream job at Blue Peter when he was fired at the age of 22 after admitting he took cocaine in a London nightclub in 1997.
He has since been open about his continuing addiction struggles, recently opening up in a candid podcast chat.
The presenter, now 49, said that he struggles to take accountability after a doctor told him his addiction is a disease inherited from his alcoholic mother.
‘I went to see an alcohol doctor not long ago,’ he said in the chat. ‘I’m not out of control or anything, but I do think I should drink less. It affects your sleep and I get bored of being tired.
‘I don’t get enough sleep because I drink too much. I enjoy drinking.’
Richard Bacon has opened up about his long-running struggle with alcohol addiction – admitting he’s sleep-deprived and reliant on heartburn tablets and vitamin injections to cope with the fallout from heavy drinking
Richard was famously just 18 months into his dream job at Blue Peter when he was fired at the age of 22 after admitting he took cocaine in a London nightclub in 1997
Speaking on The Perfect Day podcast with Jessica Knappett, he added: ‘You know you drink too much when you have a lot of Rennie. You know you’re middle aged and you drink too much and you’re popping those things.’
The father-of-two also confessed to a regular habit of having vitamin B12 injections to cope with the after-effects of drinking too much. ‘A vitamin B12 injection in your bum is famously good for hangovers. It brings you back to life,’ he said.
‘At the end of last year and for the first few months of this year, I had one a week. I’ve got this doctor – he’s a bit like Michael Jackson’s doctor – he just gives me anything I ask for.’
‘At one point I had eight prescriptions and there wasn’t really much wrong with me. He’s just like, ‘you’re a bit deficient in this, bit deficient in that. Bit of this, bit of that.’ A lot of it’s sort of vitamin based, but weirdly prescription based. But it did work… He’s terrific.’
Richard was sacked from children’s TV programme Blue Peter in 1998 after admitting to taking cocaine. To this day he is the only presenter in the history of the show to have been sacked.
‘I got a Blue Peter job at 21 and then lost it at 22 and it was a big scandal at the time,’ Richard reflected.
‘I suppose there’s something about getting caught for taking drugs where you can just come back, can’t you? It’s not one of the worst ones.
‘There are far worse ones that make you look like a malicious person. If you beat someone up, do something aggressively sexual, say something racist… those reveal something about you that people don’t like. I think the desire to get drunk and get high is something people generally can get over.’
The presenter, now 49, said that he struggles to take accountability after a doctor told him his addiction is a disease inherited from his alcoholic mother
Despite still drinking regularly, he added he ditched Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) because he found the meetings ‘boring’
Now a successful creator of TV formats and the man behind shows like This Is My House and I Literally Just Told You, Richard admits his lifestyle can still get in the way.
‘What I find annoying about myself is if I have a night of not drinking, I’ll go into the office – I work on ideas… and I’ll just have so much energy, and I’ll be better at it.’
Despite still drinking regularly, he added he ditched Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) because he found the meetings ‘boring’.
‘I’ve gone through loads of periods of stopping, and I’ve done periods of AA. I admire AA. It’s a strange combination of people telling the most dramatic stories you’ve ever heard that I find really boring. I’m not even joking.’
He recalled one meeting in Chelsea with several famous faces in the room. ‘This guy was telling this story – he’d come out of prison and he’d gone to prison because he’d got high and he’d stolen a car and he was chased by a police helicopter then he drove through a police barricade. And I remember just sitting there checking my watch going, ‘boring!’
‘Imagine someone you know telling you that story? But somehow it’s just one dramatic story after another, and it became a bit numb to it.’
Despite this, he praised the ‘generosity’ of long-term sober members who continue to attend meetings seemingly to help others. ‘If I’d been sober for 15 years, I wouldn’t still be going to AA, and listening to more stories,’ he said. ‘I think for some of them, they are fairly certain they won’t drink again but they do want to help. So it’s a very positive place. It just didn’t work for me.’
Richard, who said he was diagnosed with ‘a particularly strong strain of ADHD’ aged 42, recently consulted a specialist about why he drinks so much – and was told he inherited the destructive tendency.
‘My mum’s basically an alcoholic. My granddad died of alcoholism. He went, ‘Well that’s why, it’s just genetics.’
‘I said, some people think it’s the result of childhood trauma or something you’ve been running away from or not dealt with. And he was like, ‘Nah, it’s just genetics. It’s a disease.’
‘So now I think I can just say to my wife: it’s not my fault! It’s grandad’s fault. It’s mum’s fault.’
He added: ‘I drink and I enjoy it and I don’t seem to get in trouble so it’s fine. It’s not so much that I’m worried about being dangerous. I just the calories and the sleep. That bit is annoying.’
To slash calories in his drink, he said, he avoids beer and red wine and sticks to vodka – particularly in the form of a martini with a twist.
‘When you go to a bar and order vodka and they go, what sort of vodka do you want? I think they all taste the same! It’s so irrelevant.’
The former Radio 5 Live and Capital FM host lives in north London with his wife Rebecca McFarlane and their two children, Arthur, 13, and Ivy, 11. He admits parenthood didn’t quite sober him up the way people might expect.
Despite leaving Blue Peter in scandal, Richard returned for the show’s 60th anniversary episodes on 2018 (pictured far right with Anthea Turner, John Leslie, Diane-Louise Jordan, Tim Vincent and Katy Hill)
‘[Rebecca] had always wanted to be a mum,’ he explained. ‘So it was a really wonderful thing, but I think she looks back with disappointment at me at that time because I was still going out and not pulling my weight and coming in late.
‘I think those first few years, I didn’t snap into what you’re kind of required to do quickly enough. So there was too much of a burden on her.’
He continued: ‘I hadn’t wanted to be a parent until I met her, and then we fell in love really intensely. And she would talk about kids a lot, and that made me think, oh, right, OK.
‘I recently tried to imagine having another baby… I’m so pleased I’m out of that phase. Rebecca did the real work here, but it is definitely harder than people say.
‘No one really says how hard it is. They’re constantly relying on me to keep them alive. It’s like, f***ing hell. When they’re young – two, three, four – they’re flat out annoying.’
