Stephen Fry recalls horrific homophobic abuse at football game that left him ‘trembling for hours’

Stephen Fry has recounted the horrific abuse he suffered at a football match (Picture: Jack Taylor/Getty Images)

Stephen Fry has recounted horrific homophobic abuse he suffered at a football game which left him ‘trembling’ for hours afterwards.

The former QI presenter, 64, was attending the FA Cup at Wembley when the attack occurred, and, at first, thought the person was joking around.

Speaking on the Out To Lunch with Jay Rayner podcast, he recalled: ‘I remember once going to the FA Cup in Wembley and, as I was walking in, there was this furious face suddenly loomed right in front of me.

‘It was a skinhead and [he went], ‘You’re a f***ing p**f, I’m gonna f***ing get you…”’

Stephen – who tied the knot with husband Elliot Spencer, 34, in 2015 – admitted he thought the person wasn’t being serious, responding to the threat with: ‘That’s right, dear’.

‘He went crazy and he was coming towards me and his friend started to pull him back, and then other people said “go away, go away, go”,’ he said.

Stephen Fry married husband Elliot Spencer seven years ago (Picture: Jeff Spicer/Getty Images)

‘And I realised that person, his eyes were genuinely filled with hate, and he would have quite happily nutted me and stamped on my head and that is a shock.’

Stephen added that the attack was distressing and that it left him ‘trembling for hours afterwards’.

He said: ‘It was innocent and pathetic of me because lots of people live in that fear of physical violence much closer to them all their lives. It’s so rare for me that it really was a shock.’

The author, who is currently acting as biochemist Ian Gibbons in The Dropout on Disney Plus, and will soon appear in Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman on Netflix, also described how he’d ‘got so used to my various manoeuvres of getting my self-mockery in before I can be mocked by others’, adding ‘that when it does come, it is quite a shock.’

In 2015, Stephen’s husband Elliot revealed that the couple had to end their honeymoon in Honduras early due to homophobic abuse.

Elliot was quoted by the Daily Mail, saying in 2015: ‘We had a problem when we visited Honduras on holiday. It was homophobia. I don’t want to go into detail, but we had to leave.’

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He added: ‘Stephen takes me on his travels and he educates me. Many of the countries Stephen’s been to before, but he likes to see them through new eyes with me. It has been an amazing bonding experience.’

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