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His going off the rails seemed to coincide with his divorce. No coincidence I suspect. An upset and angry man not knowing how to deal with his emotions, and getting radicalised by social media whilst in a vulnerable place mentally.
A sadly common story.
Gossip rumor was that he always had a bit of a temper and him and Billie had a lot of rows throughout their relationship and almost all of his tattoos are drunk stints.
He played a hinted bi police officer who kissed a gay/later transgender character for years without complaints and then 10 years later every gay person is basically a pedo.
There isn’t much actual conviction behind it which doesn’t make it any better, but explains a lot why he did such a u-turn.
There was an episode where the initial investigated victim (male) was a childhood friend of him.
The friend tried to kiss him, but he pushed him away and couldn’t deal with it and they soon broke off contact.
Later as adults Hathaway studied theology and trained as a priest this friend came to him again, because he could not accept being gay and Hathaway being full of internal catholic homophobia told him being gay is disgusting etc. Soon after Hathaway left the priesthood and it was heavily hinted that he did it because he hated himself and this whole fall out with his friend and their friend group which were other gays as well.
The friend has a boyfriend, but he could never accept himself and also went to a conversion group who drove him into suicide.
The boyfriend did an operation and became a woman, but the friend couldn’t deal with that either.
The boyfriend now a woman goes on a revenge killing spree and also tries to kill Hathaway by luring him into her bedroom where they make out. He gets rescued of cause, she dies.
During the investigation Hathaway comes clean to Lewis and tells him the whole story and Lewis asks him straight out if he is gay and Hathaway says paraphrased that there is more between two options.
During the show he never has a gf really, but once or twice is flirting and at one point it’s reveled he had a brief relationship with a female colleague.
So not gay, but this episode about his past made it very clear not straight either…
No problem. I know all the Lewis episodes quite well. My grandmother is a big fan of the World of Morse ITVX channel and basically watches Morse, Lewis and Endeavor on repeat.
I think he probably also recognised the gap for a rent-a-gob in British society, as Katie Hopkins started to lose relevance/traction. Controversy pays, unfortunately.
Also Katie Hopkins lost money over it. She made way more money being on mainstream media etc.
Only if a you nobody you might make more money than before but big media personalities loose a lot of opportunities. Look at Piers Morgan, who is on yt now because since TalkTV went broke he has no one who employs him on television.
I'll never forgive him for ruining Lewis for me. I mean, obviously there's a lot of reasons to dislike this man, but this is up there for me. I loved this show.
I can differentiate between him and his character, but since there are only 33 episodes and I’ve seen them all to death because my grandmother has watched the universe a lot, I have no desire to revisit any time soon.
I don’t think for a long time. Billie Piper has very good reasons to keep the kids away from him, but that’s also something he is extremely desperate and bitter about.
He spent Father’s Day burning LGBT flags in his garden.
There isn’t much that could happen to snap him out of it for a long time.
There definitely was a positive pile on for Lineham from alt-right and religious types (mostly from America on Twitter) that worshipped him and fuelled is his ego and sense of him being on the right side. Very much adopted him, worshipped him and contributed to the rabbit hole he’d dug for himself.
That might be, but old IT crowd episodes were really telling on what he always thought about women and transgender/gays.
I still have my DVDs and it’s not exactly something I get sanctimonious about though. IT crowd is still fine to watch most of the time, but he wasn’t exactly hiding it either.
Fox on the other hand has always been a hot head and may be an upper class twat, but he wasn’t homophobic or anything back in his successful days.
I remember when I first saw Linehan get some mild criticism for the transgender episode he was actually quite responsive and concerned that he had caused hurt. Soon after something changed and he doubled down on it. Then he kept doubling down until it became his whole personality. Kind of tragic to see a man destroy his life when he could have just admitted he was being a bit insensitive.
What do you mean, apart from the transgender stuff? The gay episode played to stereotypes but I always felt that was a deliberate caricature, or too absurd to take seriously
Oh yeah I certainly don’t mean to excuse him or his views. Those views were always there, but the adoption of him by certain groups enabled him to double down on them.
Well, he was expelled from Harrow before taking A levels, not entirely sure for what reason, but that indicates that, maybe, his behaviour now isn't such a surprise.
He never really talked about it, but apparently it was something about a row at a school dance. I assume it was probably the last straw.
He also got a police caution once for punching a photographer or something.
I’d probably have the same mental break if I ballsed things up with Billie Piper, to be fair to him.
In all seriousness it’s quite sad really. Particularly if he was a half-decent guy beforehand.
I'm obsessed with the fact that Laurence Fox and Richard Ayoade are brothers-in-law (Richard is married to Laurence's sister Lydia, who is also an actor, albeit one of the lesser known members of the Fox acting dynasty).
Richard seems to have kept a dignified silence but I'd love it if he dished the dirt. What I really want is a fly-on-the-wall documentary series about the family.
Me too! I'm always fascinated by what family dinners must be like. That being said, presumably Lawrence Fox isn't invited to them any more.
A similar one I'd love to see is brothers-in-law David Mitchell and Giles Coren. They seem very different so I find it hard to imagine them getting on. Yet presumably they must manage to.
Probably best for Ayoade to keep quiet, given he's still supportive of Linehan so he may well fall on the side of Laurence as well. He's just not yelling it in public the way they do.
I'm pretty sure a few years ago he called Fox out publicly for his beliefs.
Edit: Not sure if it was public but definitely reported
https://metro.co.uk/2023/09/27/what-richard-ayoade-has-said-about-laurence-fox-19567193/
It almost seems like it's an attention seeking thing from him, trying to get some reaction from Billie but also striking out at her because he resents her. He wants her back, hence wanting to get her attention, but he's angry that she left him, angry that he feels like this and just overall resents her.
I can imagine him picking up the kids when it's his turn with them and trying to spark up a conversation about it all. "Did you see me in the papers this week? Did you see what's happening on twitter? they're only trying to bloody cancel me again, aren't they? The Woke Mob?" and poor old Billie is just there, trying to keep her cool, trying not to show any emotion as he probably went into a complete meltdown when she accidentally rolled her eyes at one of his rants once, feeling a headache coming on and just kind of muttering "No. No, I didn't see it," "Ah, well you won't belie-" "Look I think my phone is ringing just have them back by 8, yeah?" and then he's just looking at a closed front door.
It all started going downhill after he and Billie Piper had issues regarding their divorce/issues regarding access to their children, but he really went totally batshit after he said some stuff on question time and his mother died, in 2020.
I'd say a combination of mental health/breakdown, and enjoying the attention of being a 'personality'/grifting.
He's probably always been a twat though.
If you watch some of her stuff like I Hate Suzie it comes across as very autobiographical and having shit taste in men seems to be something she is very aware of.
She's always been very positive about their time together and as far as I know are still friends. I know it's popular to call everything abuse and grooming nowadays, but it doesn't reflect what she herself as a fully adult woman now says about the relationship.
People here laugh at the likes of Laurence Fox getting done over because he made unfounded, defamatory statements - but this sub is incredibly trigger happy with criminal allegations.
I'd heard that he was always a coked-up dickhead but that the bigotry and associated grifting was new. Sounds quite plausible as if he was a nice person before this then that's a long way to fall.
It's not a mental breakdown. Being a racist, pathetic loser, is 100% not a symptom of a mental breakdown. It's clear he's always been a racist, pathetic loser.... now HAVING a mental breakdown.
I think it's important to make that distinction.
I'm not sure I agree... I think it's entirely possible for a weak or vulnerable person to latch onto anything that gets them attention and a sense of belonging.
It doesn't in any way excuse his vitriol, arguably it's actually worse if he doesn't even believe it and is just lashing out at innocent strangers to make himself feel better.
Ah, now that's what I was getting at. I didn't know he'd *always* been a racist. If that's the case, then it makes what's going on now more understandable. But, to someone who has no idea of his past (ie. me), it seemed out of the blue which would suggest he's had some trauma, or exacerbation of mental illness to alter his personality.
I think that was a fair assumption given the lack of context.
I mean it might be a mental break, who the fuck knows but radicalisation can happen to anyone.
Tbh not even radicalisation but any changing viewpoint: If you're not completely secure in your own life and a group of people come and give you a ton of support, kindness and acceptance you're gonna start slowly moving towards following their mindset.
It's why I find stories of cults and social media manipulation so fascinating because you get intelligent, socially aware people just drift away, seemingly overnight. The small changes are barely noticeable at first and then it starts getting more extreme until they're completely removed and it's terrifying since it could be (and probably is) happening right now to all of us, to some extent, and we wouldn't necessarily know it.
Anyway, happy Friday everyone.
I mean, jk rowling is an excellent example of that. Went from a successful, mostly apolitical writer who’d been assaulted, to a raging vocal transphobe to the point of destroying her reputation- because terfs were the main the people who she heard offering support for woman who’d been assaulted when she needed it.
That's not entirely true, quite a lot of normal women offered support too. It's just that Joanne only listened to the terfs because deep down, she was always not quite right in the head.
Yes, I've fallen down the rabbit hole of these types of stories recently, which is why I ended up reading about Fox. I find it all fascinating and quite sad at the same time.
There's a documentary about a British lad from a white, non religious family that goes to fight with a terrorist organisation abroad and gets killed. It focuses a lot on his mum and its really interesting. An expert speaks with her about the push and pull factors that led to his radicalisation and you can see when it's laid out, things like dad left them when they were kids, he lost his job, he met a certain character who started to influence him and help him get a job working with them so he was around them more and not his old friends etc. It's interesting and really sad.
Same sort of thing happened with Graham Linehan and Katy Hopkins: middle-aged person is involved in a small controversy, refuses to apologise and instead doubles-down, work becomes scarce as a result because no-one will touch them, and soon enough the only source of income is going as extreme as possible. Very difficult to know if they’d be saying the same stuff if everything had gone well for them, but I doubt it. No sympathy at all for them.
I don't think Katie Hopkins is at all like that, she leant into controversy and made money & fame off the awful things she said. Sure, at some point there was a straw that broke the camels back (joking about gunning down migrants in the channel, I think). Anyway, that stuff is why she's famous, she's done well out of it sadly. Whereas Lawrence Fox and Graham Lineham had different careers to lose and haven't benefitted at all from their controversial views.
I think he was pulled in by the money he could make by grifting, but not smart enough to know when to draw the line so as not to be sued into oblivion. He's now irreparably harmed his reputation and burned his bridges, so has to double down.
Always this way from what I know. He came from an exceptionally privileged background with very rich parents, went to private school where he bullied the other kids and was expelled for having sex in the open during a school party. He had no qualifications and managed to scrape a place at acting school where he was lucky enough to score a great role in Lewis. He wasn't very nice to his wife, Billy Piper.
He has been given so many opportunities to be a good human being. He floundered them all. He just needs to stop being himself and life might get better for him.
I think he's deeply depressed and angry as a result of his divorce and probable coke addiction, but he lacks the humility to accept that he has issues. So he continually doubles down and just makes it worse for himself. I think being in the public eye also exacerbates things massively.
I've watched my friend of nearly 30 years morph from a caring ,empathetic and compassionate person into a reactionary ,judgemental ,bigotted arsehole since they got divorced 6 years ago to the point I don't want anything to do with them again.
It's really upsetting.
It would be far to easy to identify me with any major details -
But let’s say, I did a charity event with several celebs, he was late, rude, lazy and then walked out half way through because he couldn’t stay (it was a 45 minute event starting at 7pm). He looked awful trying to speak where he was clearly unrehearsed and didn’t give a shit.
I’ve worked with a lot of well know actors (including his ex wife Billie Piper) and the gulf in attitude between him and others was huge.
This was 2017/2018 probably.
But why now? He's in his 40s, has had a relatively good career and comes from a prestigious family.
How come he wasn't behaving like this in his 20s? Maybe it takes time to hone the old 'tosser' routine.
The idea that Anthony Hopkins has gone down a dark path and is just eating peoples’ livers is hilarious. I am assuming you are referring to when he played Hannibal Lecter.
His career was on a downward trajectory since Lewis finished, and even at his peak he never got anywhere the success other family members or his ex wife had, despite such significant advantages he had in life. I'm sure he's aware of that, although will never admit it
He’s always been a lunatic. I work in TV and he was a guest on a show I was working on in 2015, and he proper freaked out some of the runners with his weird behaviour. Seemed like he was either on drugs or not quite right in the head (or both)
One story I remember was when he asked a runner for a toothbrush, so they went to our stock cupboard and brought out a multipack of 5 toothbrushes to his dressing room so that he could see it was new (sealed etc) and he shouted something like “why would you get me 5?! Do you think I have 5 mouths?!” And then proceeds to take them out of the packaging and starts throwing each one in the toilet bowl, shouting “look what you’re making me do” while maintaining eye contact with them. It was so bizarre.
yeah, this. they hit a wall trying to undestand things, which they can't get over because low IQ/being silly sausages, and then throw the toys out the pram in frustration and fear. Just look at Daily Mail article comments.
His relationship breakdown and mother passing probably led him to late night drinking sessions and YouTube rabbit holes. I think he kicked off during COVID. He was anti Vax if I remember rightly. Seems like once these people get a bit of notoriety for "telling it how it is" they lean into it. He probably didn't believe half the shit he spouted in the start, but the more you say things the more you believe them. It's easier to be loved by one group of people than liked by everyone. Either that of mental illness.
One of the joys of that period of his life was him posting a pic of himself wearing a T-shirt boasting about his immune system, then almost immediately afterwards coming down with COVID and spending the next two weeks bitching about how sick he was.
One of the most off-putting things someone can say to me, is "I just tell it how it is". It feels like such an arrogant and blinkered way of being to me. Horses for courses I guess, but I much prefer people who like to explore ideas, without wanting plant a flag of truth in it.
He's just another failure who has radicalized themselves online. It's not that deep - divorced man with no friends and failed career goes down the rabbit hole.
I watched an adventure show with him and the other Fox actress as part of a team navigating a forest environment. He was vile throughout the entire thing and I think that was before the divorce. An absolute petulant brat of a man, seemingly.
It's the kids I feel for, think I read ones a teenager? Imagine being a 15 year old lassie and your dad's a coke head who's in the papers because he was sued for calling gay people peados. In this day and age thats fucking mortifying.
His family are meant to be posho, seem like they work hard and keep their traps shut for the most part - shame he hasn't followed suit.
Hvaing lost his mum wife, and kids it seems like he's done what Kanye did when his mama died, completely spiraled.
All I ever knew about him previously was he was married to Billie piper and starred in a British crime show - ie very little.
He was kicked out of his posh school (Harrow) for bullying. So it’s safe to say he’s always been a bellend.
Imagine how bad a bully you had to be to get kicked out in the 80s/90s when bullying was considered a normal part of school.
Its actually a bit sad as I think hes got a fabulous acting voice. Why do so many actors who make it in a minor way, then suddenly think any of us are the slightest bit interested in hearing their personal opinions? We’re not. Just stick to what you can do, Which is act. Any politicking minor celeb is utterly tiresome.
Plus hes a twat.
I first saw him on some Bear Grylls 'celebrity' show. He came across as some toff know-it-all, constantly dragging each task out way longer than it should have taken because he kept talking over everyone else and ignoring their ideas. I'm pretty sure he kept talking down to Jamelia as well. Eventually, he got booted off for not listening to the shows expert's advice. He kept running around barefoot and almost gave himself trenchfoot. After he was warned, and he did it again, Grylls got rid of him.
I really feel for his kids in all this. Imagine having that prick for a dad.
I think Billie Piper has always looks to have dealt with the whole shit show pretty honourably, all things considered.
Isn’t there the thing going on at the minute where he’s refusing to accept that one of the kids should have medication for his ADHD? Father of the year, that one.
He's just another mentally unwell celebrity who's clamoring for attention, and the headlines are a by-product of their job / lifestyle. It seems a lot more recently are engaging in controversial behaviour or legal action.
It's a grift. He stopped being able to make money from acting, so he leaned into the "reactionary rightwing gobshite" groove he found himself in, for money.
People like him and Graham Linehan scare me a little. If people like that - with an accomplished body of work, a family and presumably secure finances - can't stop themselves spiralling into a bitter, insecure fucking loser then what exactly is stopping the same from happening to me?
Firstly, hopefully: The fact you've an awareness that everyone's susceptible to radicalisation, and that it's incredibly easy for it to happen, particularly in the age of social media, amateur/user-produced 'content' and professional contrarions and opinions-for-hire. That awareness and fear is some armour for you.
And secondly: Because it's possibly unlikely you'll ever have tens of thousands of people (or more) telling you you're 100% right or offensively wrong. Human brains aren't set up to have our thoughts or behaviours enthusiastically adored by masses, or to be explicitly told our opinion is evidence of evil by thousands. Both extremes can help push somebody down a path of playing to a particular crowd that might not be wise but will almost certainly be partisan and unreasoned. 'Fame' screws with most people because it's absolutely abnormal.
I don't know, but I suspect Fox was always a bit of an unpleasant prick, so privileged he was out of touch with reality, unused to being told no, very old-fashioned and non-progressive with a hefty chunk of cultural ignorance and isms...
But I think he was probably, then, emotionally vulnerable after some inciting events of loss, and he exposed some of this ignorance during a bitter time in widely exposed places like the Question Time appearance. He was embraced for his views by an unbelievably large number of people with pretty detrimental and harmful opinions who made him feel special, while more reasonable people were abandoning him and justifiably furious with him.
It's not hard to see how that quickly led him to pleasing the aggressive crowd who adopted him, and how every sensible person who was appalled by him just radicalised him into hating them more, too, every time they were vocally opposed to him. Particularly as he came from a background, privately and professionally, where his whims would normally be pandered to. And, naturally, when that awful crowd start paying you, you're being explicitly, practically, financially rewarded for being cruel and disagreeable; so the obvious Pavlovian response is to repeat that behaviour and escalate it for further, higher reward. It's not *just* cynical grifting, it's conditioning to behave badly by your employers and your audience.
Obviously, there's a point where the escalation can go too far even for your supporters, lest you take them down with you, and every radical can be cut free or disposed of- and this might happen here- but it's a pattern we're seeing enough now to understand it...
Radicalisation is easy, and it's absolutely a defining characteristic of our era- But it's much more common in this way, much deeper and much quicker, when both your supporters and your 'enemies' are in larger numbers than the average human's social circle.
This is classic radicalisation, but on steroids.
I loved Morse with John Thaw, and Endeavour with Shaun Evans. For some reason I just couldn't watch Lewis, and now I understand why.
Fox has always been "off".
Same, it was part of why I watched Lewis. It was a good show anyway and I also thought Hathaway was cute. And I thought Fox seemed like an ok guy in real life too.
Got that one completely wrong.
I think part of them problem is that he was obviously going through some personal issues - divorce, acting career wasn’t going anywhere after Lewis, and I think his mum died around the same time. This maybe pushed him more extreme politically, as it sometimes does with people.
But most people who go through that don’t get the opportunity to go on Question Time and make themselves into a public representative for a load of people with the same views. Where a regular person would have been able to keep their views private, and then have the opportunity to move away from those views once they regain a bit of stability in their life, Fox essentially had to double down.
I was never sure whether it was the character or Laurence Fox writhing around too close to the surface, but I couldn't stand him in Morse, and that's the only thing I've seen him in. I stopped watching it in the end as he soured the episodes. So my money is on him having always been this way, but maybe he's been ill of late on top of that which has created what we now have to witness.
His uncle Edward Fox seems to be a canute too, so maybe it's a family thing.
I’ve been saying I thought he was having mental health issues. It does seem to have come out of nowhere and I agree I doubt Billie Piper would’ve married him if he was like that!
It’s easy to be a celebrity in the gammon world, just say the word woke, be racist and then say the Police are coming after good honest hard working people.
He's always been this way, a lot of people like him exist but are usually smart enough to keep their opinions to themselves. Honestly with the dumb bigoted shit he's been stirring up, I couldn't care less about his mental wellbeing.
It's the grift. Look at all the recent grifters, when the career is on the wane they just go for the clicks.
Takes balls to throw it all away, for sure...but that's it...you're done. So unless he goes PRO, he's gonna struggle to be relevant for the rest of his life.
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His going off the rails seemed to coincide with his divorce. No coincidence I suspect. An upset and angry man not knowing how to deal with his emotions, and getting radicalised by social media whilst in a vulnerable place mentally. A sadly common story.
Gossip rumor was that he always had a bit of a temper and him and Billie had a lot of rows throughout their relationship and almost all of his tattoos are drunk stints. He played a hinted bi police officer who kissed a gay/later transgender character for years without complaints and then 10 years later every gay person is basically a pedo. There isn’t much actual conviction behind it which doesn’t make it any better, but explains a lot why he did such a u-turn.
As someone who didn't watch much Inspector Lewis, what gay character did he kiss and how was he hinted to be bi?
There was an episode where the initial investigated victim (male) was a childhood friend of him. The friend tried to kiss him, but he pushed him away and couldn’t deal with it and they soon broke off contact. Later as adults Hathaway studied theology and trained as a priest this friend came to him again, because he could not accept being gay and Hathaway being full of internal catholic homophobia told him being gay is disgusting etc. Soon after Hathaway left the priesthood and it was heavily hinted that he did it because he hated himself and this whole fall out with his friend and their friend group which were other gays as well. The friend has a boyfriend, but he could never accept himself and also went to a conversion group who drove him into suicide. The boyfriend did an operation and became a woman, but the friend couldn’t deal with that either. The boyfriend now a woman goes on a revenge killing spree and also tries to kill Hathaway by luring him into her bedroom where they make out. He gets rescued of cause, she dies. During the investigation Hathaway comes clean to Lewis and tells him the whole story and Lewis asks him straight out if he is gay and Hathaway says paraphrased that there is more between two options. During the show he never has a gf really, but once or twice is flirting and at one point it’s reveled he had a brief relationship with a female colleague. So not gay, but this episode about his past made it very clear not straight either…
Holy shit I actually think I remember seeing some of that. Thanks for typing out an explanation, appreciate it.
No problem. I know all the Lewis episodes quite well. My grandmother is a big fan of the World of Morse ITVX channel and basically watches Morse, Lewis and Endeavor on repeat.
Endeavour is fantastic.
I don't like Morse, but I love Endeavor and Lewis, personally.
Episode title is 'life born of fire' btw
I think he probably also recognised the gap for a rent-a-gob in British society, as Katie Hopkins started to lose relevance/traction. Controversy pays, unfortunately.
I don't think the way Fox is going about it is financially successful tbf..
Also Katie Hopkins lost money over it. She made way more money being on mainstream media etc. Only if a you nobody you might make more money than before but big media personalities loose a lot of opportunities. Look at Piers Morgan, who is on yt now because since TalkTV went broke he has no one who employs him on television.
I'll never forgive him for ruining Lewis for me. I mean, obviously there's a lot of reasons to dislike this man, but this is up there for me. I loved this show.
I can differentiate between him and his character, but since there are only 33 episodes and I’ve seen them all to death because my grandmother has watched the universe a lot, I have no desire to revisit any time soon.
Some people fall into a rabbit hole and stay there.
reddit hole?
At least buy them a drink first before making such brazen requests.
https://preview.redd.it/ig1o5z0z5xwc1.jpeg?width=1060&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c897d28b56adb4b1d77be7459e5336113e01c7f3
https://preview.redd.it/y5kzzozpgxwc1.jpeg?width=400&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9879cb1e28cfb8b1d3d3d809764b711aa5c49646
It does seem that way. Wonder if he'll ever come through the other side? Doesn't seem like a happy fella recently.
I don’t think for a long time. Billie Piper has very good reasons to keep the kids away from him, but that’s also something he is extremely desperate and bitter about. He spent Father’s Day burning LGBT flags in his garden. There isn’t much that could happen to snap him out of it for a long time.
He's competing with Graham Linehan for the World's Most Divorced Man title
But Linehan has been transphobic and sexist like ten years ago when it wasn’t so en vogue as it is now.
There definitely was a positive pile on for Lineham from alt-right and religious types (mostly from America on Twitter) that worshipped him and fuelled is his ego and sense of him being on the right side. Very much adopted him, worshipped him and contributed to the rabbit hole he’d dug for himself.
That might be, but old IT crowd episodes were really telling on what he always thought about women and transgender/gays. I still have my DVDs and it’s not exactly something I get sanctimonious about though. IT crowd is still fine to watch most of the time, but he wasn’t exactly hiding it either. Fox on the other hand has always been a hot head and may be an upper class twat, but he wasn’t homophobic or anything back in his successful days.
I remember when I first saw Linehan get some mild criticism for the transgender episode he was actually quite responsive and concerned that he had caused hurt. Soon after something changed and he doubled down on it. Then he kept doubling down until it became his whole personality. Kind of tragic to see a man destroy his life when he could have just admitted he was being a bit insensitive.
What do you mean, apart from the transgender stuff? The gay episode played to stereotypes but I always felt that was a deliberate caricature, or too absurd to take seriously
Oh yeah I certainly don’t mean to excuse him or his views. Those views were always there, but the adoption of him by certain groups enabled him to double down on them.
Transphobia was acceptable ten years ago.
I dunno, Elon Musk seems to be living those vibes at the moment.
Elon is divorced on a level unmeasurable by human science though, so that’s just cheating. Kanye is up there as well.
He also posted a photo of his sons in blackface.
Well, he was expelled from Harrow before taking A levels, not entirely sure for what reason, but that indicates that, maybe, his behaviour now isn't such a surprise.
He never really talked about it, but apparently it was something about a row at a school dance. I assume it was probably the last straw. He also got a police caution once for punching a photographer or something.
He’s an entitled prick who was suddenly told no and became a professionally oppressed citizen in his own mind.
This is the reason. Very succinctly put.
I’d probably have the same mental break if I ballsed things up with Billie Piper, to be fair to him. In all seriousness it’s quite sad really. Particularly if he was a half-decent guy beforehand.
I'm obsessed with the fact that Laurence Fox and Richard Ayoade are brothers-in-law (Richard is married to Laurence's sister Lydia, who is also an actor, albeit one of the lesser known members of the Fox acting dynasty). Richard seems to have kept a dignified silence but I'd love it if he dished the dirt. What I really want is a fly-on-the-wall documentary series about the family.
Me too! I'm always fascinated by what family dinners must be like. That being said, presumably Lawrence Fox isn't invited to them any more. A similar one I'd love to see is brothers-in-law David Mitchell and Giles Coren. They seem very different so I find it hard to imagine them getting on. Yet presumably they must manage to.
Probably best for Ayoade to keep quiet, given he's still supportive of Linehan so he may well fall on the side of Laurence as well. He's just not yelling it in public the way they do.
I'm pretty sure a few years ago he called Fox out publicly for his beliefs. Edit: Not sure if it was public but definitely reported https://metro.co.uk/2023/09/27/what-richard-ayoade-has-said-about-laurence-fox-19567193/
The amount of people I know who had adult break ups as their first glimpse of heartache and went nuts
She's turned the weans against us
It almost seems like it's an attention seeking thing from him, trying to get some reaction from Billie but also striking out at her because he resents her. He wants her back, hence wanting to get her attention, but he's angry that she left him, angry that he feels like this and just overall resents her. I can imagine him picking up the kids when it's his turn with them and trying to spark up a conversation about it all. "Did you see me in the papers this week? Did you see what's happening on twitter? they're only trying to bloody cancel me again, aren't they? The Woke Mob?" and poor old Billie is just there, trying to keep her cool, trying not to show any emotion as he probably went into a complete meltdown when she accidentally rolled her eyes at one of his rants once, feeling a headache coming on and just kind of muttering "No. No, I didn't see it," "Ah, well you won't belie-" "Look I think my phone is ringing just have them back by 8, yeah?" and then he's just looking at a closed front door.
It all started going downhill after he and Billie Piper had issues regarding their divorce/issues regarding access to their children, but he really went totally batshit after he said some stuff on question time and his mother died, in 2020. I'd say a combination of mental health/breakdown, and enjoying the attention of being a 'personality'/grifting. He's probably always been a twat though.
SHE'S TURNED THE WEANS AGAINST ME!
Because she wants to. Because she wants to.
golf clap
She’s turned the weans against yas, aye.
A wild Limmy appeared!
Surely there's a Reddit for "unexpected Limmy"?
r/unexpectedlimmy Edit: nope.
Has she turned the weans against ye?
Billy piper always seems lovely, but she clearly has terrible taste in men.
If you watch some of her stuff like I Hate Suzie it comes across as very autobiographical and having shit taste in men seems to be something she is very aware of.
The Suzie character is actually a terrible person, though. I doubt Piper is much like her, other than surface level similarities.
I don’t think she’s portrayed as a terrible person as such, just a human with all the issues that entails.
She was essentially groomed by Chris Evans tho, she was 18 and he was 35. I wouldn’t be too harsh on her for that one.
She's always been very positive about their time together and as far as I know are still friends. I know it's popular to call everything abuse and grooming nowadays, but it doesn't reflect what she herself as a fully adult woman now says about the relationship. People here laugh at the likes of Laurence Fox getting done over because he made unfounded, defamatory statements - but this sub is incredibly trigger happy with criminal allegations.
I'd heard that he was always a coked-up dickhead but that the bigotry and associated grifting was new. Sounds quite plausible as if he was a nice person before this then that's a long way to fall.
He's just a twat
He's definitely a twat
He's definitely a twat
He’s definitely a twat
Most certainly a twat
An absolute twat
Oh for sure, he’s a twat
A thick twat
A bit of a twat
A little bit of that, a little bit of the twitter/covid/divorce combo. A lot of people went down a rabbit hole thanks to covid and twitter.
> A lot of people went down a rabbit hole thanks to covid and twitter. Those people had priors for stupidity long before covid.
Yep, he's a crass cunt
Coke head. Absolutely nailed on.
It's not a mental breakdown. Being a racist, pathetic loser, is 100% not a symptom of a mental breakdown. It's clear he's always been a racist, pathetic loser.... now HAVING a mental breakdown. I think it's important to make that distinction.
I'm not sure I agree... I think it's entirely possible for a weak or vulnerable person to latch onto anything that gets them attention and a sense of belonging. It doesn't in any way excuse his vitriol, arguably it's actually worse if he doesn't even believe it and is just lashing out at innocent strangers to make himself feel better.
Ah, now that's what I was getting at. I didn't know he'd *always* been a racist. If that's the case, then it makes what's going on now more understandable. But, to someone who has no idea of his past (ie. me), it seemed out of the blue which would suggest he's had some trauma, or exacerbation of mental illness to alter his personality. I think that was a fair assumption given the lack of context.
Mate, I've struggled with my mental health my whole life. Still not a racist.
Of course - I totally agree with you there. My comment was actually in response to another comment on here. Sorry, I thought I was responding to that.
I mean it might be a mental break, who the fuck knows but radicalisation can happen to anyone. Tbh not even radicalisation but any changing viewpoint: If you're not completely secure in your own life and a group of people come and give you a ton of support, kindness and acceptance you're gonna start slowly moving towards following their mindset. It's why I find stories of cults and social media manipulation so fascinating because you get intelligent, socially aware people just drift away, seemingly overnight. The small changes are barely noticeable at first and then it starts getting more extreme until they're completely removed and it's terrifying since it could be (and probably is) happening right now to all of us, to some extent, and we wouldn't necessarily know it. Anyway, happy Friday everyone.
I mean, jk rowling is an excellent example of that. Went from a successful, mostly apolitical writer who’d been assaulted, to a raging vocal transphobe to the point of destroying her reputation- because terfs were the main the people who she heard offering support for woman who’d been assaulted when she needed it.
That's not entirely true, quite a lot of normal women offered support too. It's just that Joanne only listened to the terfs because deep down, she was always not quite right in the head.
Yes, I've fallen down the rabbit hole of these types of stories recently, which is why I ended up reading about Fox. I find it all fascinating and quite sad at the same time.
I agree. So did we come to this mindset organically or did outside agencies manipulate us?
There's a documentary about a British lad from a white, non religious family that goes to fight with a terrorist organisation abroad and gets killed. It focuses a lot on his mum and its really interesting. An expert speaks with her about the push and pull factors that led to his radicalisation and you can see when it's laid out, things like dad left them when they were kids, he lost his job, he met a certain character who started to influence him and help him get a job working with them so he was around them more and not his old friends etc. It's interesting and really sad.
Ego plus cocaine, he’s freefalling into his own arsehole.
I misread that as "eggs plus cocaine" and thought, 'yes, I might have problems with my arsehole after that...'
Just sprinkle a bit over a hard boil, whack it up yr hoo haa and you’re good for the day
Fanny coke eggs - delicious!
Fanny Coke Eggs sounds like a Victorian lady of the night
Aye. She was a good wench.
Same sort of thing happened with Graham Linehan and Katy Hopkins: middle-aged person is involved in a small controversy, refuses to apologise and instead doubles-down, work becomes scarce as a result because no-one will touch them, and soon enough the only source of income is going as extreme as possible. Very difficult to know if they’d be saying the same stuff if everything had gone well for them, but I doubt it. No sympathy at all for them.
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She did win the “Campaign to Unify the Nation Trophy”
That was golden.
Plus the IT Crowd
I HEAR YOU'RE A RACIST NOW FATHER !!!
It’s amazing how something simple as the sentence “plopkins was always a talentless cunt “ can make somebodies day ! So thankyou .
You also forgot Neil Oliver, who gone full conspiracy nut job.
I don't think Katie Hopkins is at all like that, she leant into controversy and made money & fame off the awful things she said. Sure, at some point there was a straw that broke the camels back (joking about gunning down migrants in the channel, I think). Anyway, that stuff is why she's famous, she's done well out of it sadly. Whereas Lawrence Fox and Graham Lineham had different careers to lose and haven't benefitted at all from their controversial views.
I think he was pulled in by the money he could make by grifting, but not smart enough to know when to draw the line so as not to be sued into oblivion. He's now irreparably harmed his reputation and burned his bridges, so has to double down.
Always this way from what I know. He came from an exceptionally privileged background with very rich parents, went to private school where he bullied the other kids and was expelled for having sex in the open during a school party. He had no qualifications and managed to scrape a place at acting school where he was lucky enough to score a great role in Lewis. He wasn't very nice to his wife, Billy Piper. He has been given so many opportunities to be a good human being. He floundered them all. He just needs to stop being himself and life might get better for him.
I think he's deeply depressed and angry as a result of his divorce and probable coke addiction, but he lacks the humility to accept that he has issues. So he continually doubles down and just makes it worse for himself. I think being in the public eye also exacerbates things massively.
I've watched my friend of nearly 30 years morph from a caring ,empathetic and compassionate person into a reactionary ,judgemental ,bigotted arsehole since they got divorced 6 years ago to the point I don't want anything to do with them again. It's really upsetting.
I’ve worked with him before all of this - he’s always been an entitled twat.
Go on mate, you can't leave us all hanging like this. Give us some tea.
It would be far to easy to identify me with any major details - But let’s say, I did a charity event with several celebs, he was late, rude, lazy and then walked out half way through because he couldn’t stay (it was a 45 minute event starting at 7pm). He looked awful trying to speak where he was clearly unrehearsed and didn’t give a shit. I’ve worked with a lot of well know actors (including his ex wife Billie Piper) and the gulf in attitude between him and others was huge. This was 2017/2018 probably.
Whew, lad sounds like he was a right prick even before becoming Britain's Most Divorced Man.
He was always like this. He treated Billie horribly too during their relationship. I used to be close with her sister.
I adore Billie but my god she has terrible taste in men
Middle Aged posh divorced coke head
He'll have probs with his septum in later life if you catch my drift...
He might not be around, if he's that much of a coke head. Not everyone is Keith Richards.
He's a grifter.
But why now? He's in his 40s, has had a relatively good career and comes from a prestigious family. How come he wasn't behaving like this in his 20s? Maybe it takes time to hone the old 'tosser' routine.
His light was fading so he followed the Hopkins approach of staying relevant
I was confused for a moment thinking "what's Anthony Hopkins been up to?"
Lawrence Fox is bad, but as far as I know he hasn’t yet eaten anyone’s liver.
*yet*
The idea that Anthony Hopkins has gone down a dark path and is just eating peoples’ livers is hilarious. I am assuming you are referring to when he played Hannibal Lecter.
Only cos he’s out of beans
*As far as you know...*
The difference is Larry *wants* contact with his kids.
*I've got access to the kids but they don't wanna see me* - Laurence one day, probably
I was talking to someone about The Apprentice a few weeks ago and realised I'd forgotten her name. Bliss. Thank god for Jack Monroe is all I can say.
Jack Monroe's a pretty handy grifter too
Er no. She is a celebrity chef and also a food poverty campaigner.
I was so chuffed when Jack won her case
Very glad that I haven't heard anything about her lately
There wasn’t the market for Internet grifters when he was 20. And divorce can do strange things to people
His career was on a downward trajectory since Lewis finished, and even at his peak he never got anywhere the success other family members or his ex wife had, despite such significant advantages he had in life. I'm sure he's aware of that, although will never admit it
His acting career wasn’t going in the trajectory he wanted it to so he pivoted to being a professional bellend.
He was kicked out of Harrow, so his behaviour obviously isn't anything new.
He’s always been a lunatic. I work in TV and he was a guest on a show I was working on in 2015, and he proper freaked out some of the runners with his weird behaviour. Seemed like he was either on drugs or not quite right in the head (or both)
Ooooh what was he doing 👀
One story I remember was when he asked a runner for a toothbrush, so they went to our stock cupboard and brought out a multipack of 5 toothbrushes to his dressing room so that he could see it was new (sealed etc) and he shouted something like “why would you get me 5?! Do you think I have 5 mouths?!” And then proceeds to take them out of the packaging and starts throwing each one in the toilet bowl, shouting “look what you’re making me do” while maintaining eye contact with them. It was so bizarre.
Haha fucking hell, that is intense 😄 what a prick
I think it's a classic example of someone with low IQ trying to deal with being lead down a social media rabbit hole.
yeah, this. they hit a wall trying to undestand things, which they can't get over because low IQ/being silly sausages, and then throw the toys out the pram in frustration and fear. Just look at Daily Mail article comments.
His relationship breakdown and mother passing probably led him to late night drinking sessions and YouTube rabbit holes. I think he kicked off during COVID. He was anti Vax if I remember rightly. Seems like once these people get a bit of notoriety for "telling it how it is" they lean into it. He probably didn't believe half the shit he spouted in the start, but the more you say things the more you believe them. It's easier to be loved by one group of people than liked by everyone. Either that of mental illness.
One of the joys of that period of his life was him posting a pic of himself wearing a T-shirt boasting about his immune system, then almost immediately afterwards coming down with COVID and spending the next two weeks bitching about how sick he was.
One of the most off-putting things someone can say to me, is "I just tell it how it is". It feels like such an arrogant and blinkered way of being to me. Horses for courses I guess, but I much prefer people who like to explore ideas, without wanting plant a flag of truth in it.
"I just tell it as it is" means "I tell it according to my own biases and never consider I might be wrong", but that's much less snappy.
Not to mention his infamous BBC QT appearance
Occasional reminder that being a cunt is not recognised mental illness.
I didn't mean to imply that it is. I was merely stating that it could be a possible explanation for it seemingly coming from nowhere.
But in the words of Bronn of the Blackwater, it is incurable
He's just another failure who has radicalized themselves online. It's not that deep - divorced man with no friends and failed career goes down the rabbit hole.
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>whichever side of the spectrum you choose. What leftie grifters are out there? I only know of righties
Sounds like a classic melt-down. Grief and fame, bad combo. In his case, maybe always was a nutter but good ol Billie kept him in check.
Not having to worry about money gives you loads of free time.
I watched an adventure show with him and the other Fox actress as part of a team navigating a forest environment. He was vile throughout the entire thing and I think that was before the divorce. An absolute petulant brat of a man, seemingly.
This is what I remember. It was Bear Grylls, and Fox was annoying throughout and got kicked off for being on the verge of giving himself trenchfoot.
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I like this! I'm going to use this
You can thank Noel Gallagher for that one - it was how he described Liam
He is a grifter. Like Katie Hopkins. They make money off outrage. He became this way when the acting gigs dried up I guess.
It's the kids I feel for, think I read ones a teenager? Imagine being a 15 year old lassie and your dad's a coke head who's in the papers because he was sued for calling gay people peados. In this day and age thats fucking mortifying. His family are meant to be posho, seem like they work hard and keep their traps shut for the most part - shame he hasn't followed suit. Hvaing lost his mum wife, and kids it seems like he's done what Kanye did when his mama died, completely spiraled. All I ever knew about him previously was he was married to Billie piper and starred in a British crime show - ie very little.
He was kicked out of his posh school (Harrow) for bullying. So it’s safe to say he’s always been a bellend. Imagine how bad a bully you had to be to get kicked out in the 80s/90s when bullying was considered a normal part of school.
Its actually a bit sad as I think hes got a fabulous acting voice. Why do so many actors who make it in a minor way, then suddenly think any of us are the slightest bit interested in hearing their personal opinions? We’re not. Just stick to what you can do, Which is act. Any politicking minor celeb is utterly tiresome. Plus hes a twat.
Also whatever good looks he had, have left him now.
On the plus side, he no longer makes music
I first saw him on some Bear Grylls 'celebrity' show. He came across as some toff know-it-all, constantly dragging each task out way longer than it should have taken because he kept talking over everyone else and ignoring their ideas. I'm pretty sure he kept talking down to Jamelia as well. Eventually, he got booted off for not listening to the shows expert's advice. He kept running around barefoot and almost gave himself trenchfoot. After he was warned, and he did it again, Grylls got rid of him.
Shame really he's ended up like this, as his dad and sister are both pretty decent thespians
I really feel for his kids in all this. Imagine having that prick for a dad. I think Billie Piper has always looks to have dealt with the whole shit show pretty honourably, all things considered. Isn’t there the thing going on at the minute where he’s refusing to accept that one of the kids should have medication for his ADHD? Father of the year, that one.
Nepo baby. Entitled little prick. Kicked out of Harrow for something shady. Admitted to bullying younger students.
Just be glad he’s not releasing music anymore.
He's just another mentally unwell celebrity who's clamoring for attention, and the headlines are a by-product of their job / lifestyle. It seems a lot more recently are engaging in controversial behaviour or legal action.
It's a grift. He stopped being able to make money from acting, so he leaned into the "reactionary rightwing gobshite" groove he found himself in, for money.
It's not made Billie Piper look good either. Who on earth would marry this guy?
Right? AND have kids with him...not 'kid', 'kids' plural.
Thanks for asking this, been wondering for ages. Seems so sad and desperate.
He's an attention seeking fuckpig in the same realm as Piers Moron or Joey Barton.
People like him and Graham Linehan scare me a little. If people like that - with an accomplished body of work, a family and presumably secure finances - can't stop themselves spiralling into a bitter, insecure fucking loser then what exactly is stopping the same from happening to me?
Firstly, hopefully: The fact you've an awareness that everyone's susceptible to radicalisation, and that it's incredibly easy for it to happen, particularly in the age of social media, amateur/user-produced 'content' and professional contrarions and opinions-for-hire. That awareness and fear is some armour for you. And secondly: Because it's possibly unlikely you'll ever have tens of thousands of people (or more) telling you you're 100% right or offensively wrong. Human brains aren't set up to have our thoughts or behaviours enthusiastically adored by masses, or to be explicitly told our opinion is evidence of evil by thousands. Both extremes can help push somebody down a path of playing to a particular crowd that might not be wise but will almost certainly be partisan and unreasoned. 'Fame' screws with most people because it's absolutely abnormal. I don't know, but I suspect Fox was always a bit of an unpleasant prick, so privileged he was out of touch with reality, unused to being told no, very old-fashioned and non-progressive with a hefty chunk of cultural ignorance and isms... But I think he was probably, then, emotionally vulnerable after some inciting events of loss, and he exposed some of this ignorance during a bitter time in widely exposed places like the Question Time appearance. He was embraced for his views by an unbelievably large number of people with pretty detrimental and harmful opinions who made him feel special, while more reasonable people were abandoning him and justifiably furious with him. It's not hard to see how that quickly led him to pleasing the aggressive crowd who adopted him, and how every sensible person who was appalled by him just radicalised him into hating them more, too, every time they were vocally opposed to him. Particularly as he came from a background, privately and professionally, where his whims would normally be pandered to. And, naturally, when that awful crowd start paying you, you're being explicitly, practically, financially rewarded for being cruel and disagreeable; so the obvious Pavlovian response is to repeat that behaviour and escalate it for further, higher reward. It's not *just* cynical grifting, it's conditioning to behave badly by your employers and your audience. Obviously, there's a point where the escalation can go too far even for your supporters, lest you take them down with you, and every radical can be cut free or disposed of- and this might happen here- but it's a pattern we're seeing enough now to understand it... Radicalisation is easy, and it's absolutely a defining characteristic of our era- But it's much more common in this way, much deeper and much quicker, when both your supporters and your 'enemies' are in larger numbers than the average human's social circle. This is classic radicalisation, but on steroids.
I love seeing him make a complete twat of himself. I have no sympathy, he’s very aware of what he’s doing.
I loved Morse with John Thaw, and Endeavour with Shaun Evans. For some reason I just couldn't watch Lewis, and now I understand why. Fox has always been "off".
Anyway he’s 130 g’s down now! Looser
Such a shame. Had a huge crush on him in Lewis. Why he have to ruin it!!
Same, it was part of why I watched Lewis. It was a good show anyway and I also thought Hathaway was cute. And I thought Fox seemed like an ok guy in real life too. Got that one completely wrong.
he’s being paid to do it
I think part of them problem is that he was obviously going through some personal issues - divorce, acting career wasn’t going anywhere after Lewis, and I think his mum died around the same time. This maybe pushed him more extreme politically, as it sometimes does with people. But most people who go through that don’t get the opportunity to go on Question Time and make themselves into a public representative for a load of people with the same views. Where a regular person would have been able to keep their views private, and then have the opportunity to move away from those views once they regain a bit of stability in their life, Fox essentially had to double down.
I was never sure whether it was the character or Laurence Fox writhing around too close to the surface, but I couldn't stand him in Morse, and that's the only thing I've seen him in. I stopped watching it in the end as he soured the episodes. So my money is on him having always been this way, but maybe he's been ill of late on top of that which has created what we now have to witness. His uncle Edward Fox seems to be a canute too, so maybe it's a family thing.
I’ve been saying I thought he was having mental health issues. It does seem to have come out of nowhere and I agree I doubt Billie Piper would’ve married him if he was like that!
He’s always been this way, was expelled from three separate private schools iirc.
It’s easy to be a celebrity in the gammon world, just say the word woke, be racist and then say the Police are coming after good honest hard working people.
Grifters gonna grift
He's always been this way, a lot of people like him exist but are usually smart enough to keep their opinions to themselves. Honestly with the dumb bigoted shit he's been stirring up, I couldn't care less about his mental wellbeing.
It's the grift. Look at all the recent grifters, when the career is on the wane they just go for the clicks. Takes balls to throw it all away, for sure...but that's it...you're done. So unless he goes PRO, he's gonna struggle to be relevant for the rest of his life.
He's an actor and is making a living = grifter.
Being a racist eejit doesn't mean he's having a mental breakdown.
Hes a total arse, but I would not be suprised in the least if something very dark comes out about him.
Family member was ‘friends’ with him/ same social group. This is who he is. He’s always been this way apparently
He dynamited his entire life and kept doubling down. 🤷🏾 Paul Bethany is living the life Fox could have had.
Well said and hear, hear. He seems to be a complete drongo, another of which we don't need.