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According to the old adage, love often comes when we least expect it – and, by all accounts, Stephen Fry might be inclined to agree.
After all, it was Fry’s attendance at a house party that resulted in his chance meeting with comedian Elliott Spencer, the man who would soon become his husband and, by the actor’s own admission, make him a ‘lucky man.’
Given his notoriously guarded nature, dates remain vague, but the 67-year old actor’s first encounter with Spencer – who, at 36, is 29 years his junior – is widely believed to have taken place in 2012.
But it was Fry himself who eventually confirmed their engagement, shortly after submitting a formal application to marry in Norfolk, his home county, and ten days before their wedding in January 2015.
Addressing followers on Twitter at the time, he wrote: ‘It looks as though a certain cat is out of a certain bag. I’m very very happy of course but had hoped for a private wedding. Fat chance!
‘Thank you all SO much for your kind congratulations. Deeply touched.’
Public appearances together have been infrequent at best, but Fry was accompanied by his husband while receiving a knighthood at Windsor Castle last March, their first sighting together in six years.
Images taken on the day capture Spencer in the background as he watches on proudly alongside Fry’s mother and sister.
Speaking on The Jonathan Ross Show shortly before his investiture, Fry admitted the couple ‘don’t go out to Hollywood parties much’ and instead prefer a night in together.
The confession came after he had shared a rare tribute to Spencer on their 10th wedding anniversary in an Instagram post, writing: ‘Ten happy years to the day since we were joined in marriage. I’m a lucky man.’
In June, Fry insisted the generational age gap of almost thirty years has aided their relationship, with Spencer helping him develop an unlikely appreciation for rap music.
‘I can tell you how to have a successful relationship with Elliot, but that’s probably not very helpful,’ he said during an appearance on Rylan Clark’s podcast, Rylan: How to Be in Love.
‘But I guess it’s all the normal human virtues – some of which are forgotten virtues -but one of the most important human virtues, I think, isn’t even really considered a virtue.
‘But it is one that changes the world. And it’s not kindness, which obviously is important, but it’s a subset of kindness, perhaps. And it’s cheerfulness.’
He added: ‘When you’re in the presence of a cheerful person, It makes everything better. They’re like their own sunshine. So that’s one of the things. If one is down to help the other come up…
‘And understand each other’s differences as emotional human beings. For example, I had to understand, and he had to understand, that I am extremely energetic and bouncy and chatty in the mornings at breakfast and he is not.
‘So I had to find ways of just calming myself and he had to come up a little bit and not be quite so kind of, “will you shut up Stephen!”‘
Fry also told how his husband had introduced him to new things, among them an unexpected love of wrestling and rap.
He said: ‘He teaches me things I just didn’t know. He introduced me to Kendrick Lamar, which was a great thing to do because Kendrick Lamar I’ve decided is a great poetical spirit, a really remarkable figure.
‘But that plus, now you’re really going to laugh here because I thought, is he insane? He has a great affection for, and I guess you could call it ironic, but it’s real – for WWE…’
The broadcaster has long been vocal about his sexuality, and in 2024 opened up about how being gay felt like there was ‘a horror inside him’ when he was a teenager.
He will be the first of a new run of celebrities to feature on the new series of ITV show The Assembly, during which stars are grilled by an audience of autistic, neurodivergent, and/or learning-disabled interviewers. was ‘worse than the Celebrity Traitors roundtable’.
And Fry, who also took part in the first series of the BBC spin-off of the Traitors last year, has described the experience as ’embarrassing, awkward, and uncoordinated.’
He said of the question that shocked him the most on The Assembly: ‘I think the rather eye-watering curiosity as to my sexual preferences.
‘Not sexuality, you understand – that was understood – but my preferences within that sexuality framework… well, I wasn’t expecting that!
‘[I was] as embarrassed, awkward and uncoordinated as I always feel when dancing.’
Asked what was more ‘intense’, Fry joked that the grilling on the ITV show was worse than his time around the roundtable on Celebrity Traitors.
He continued: ‘The Assembly just pips it. The Traitors roundtable sees the possibility of mistakenly naysaying, or of being punished, but within a game. The Assembly puts one under a microscope for real.’
He added of how the interview differed to those in his daily life: ‘The frankness, the openness, the genuine curiosity. These are not things one is used to in the normal run of journalistic inquisition.
‘It kept me on my toes as much as I expected. But it was also friendlier and more fun than I had feared.’
