Heston Blumenthal felt "stuck on a hamster wheel" at the height of his television career.
Heston Blumenthal
Between 2002 and 2012 the unique chef was rarely off screens and was happy to have a platform on television to show off his experimental style of cooking.
However, Heston now accepts that combining his TV career with his restaurant business was too much and feels as though his hectic schedule contributed to his health issues, which included an ADHD diagnosis in 2016.
In an interview with the new issue of Radio Times magazine, he said: "I was stuck on a hamster wheel. I saw the TV stuff as an opportunity to learn, and express my work.
"But then we needed a lab and a team that to do the TV food, and we needed more money to fund the lab. So you get busier and busier, then one day you stick your head above water and go, 'How did I end up here?'
"My assistant said, 'If you honour all your contracts this year, it adds up to 372 days a year and we're already in February.' I don't regret a thing, but I had to perform a bit of a reverse manoeuvre."
The 53-year-old kitchen expert began to feel that something was wrong because of his "heat-sensitive" head.
Heston explained: "For years I've had a very heat-sensitive head. My head starts to get a bit shiny at about 21 degrees. I also have a really busy brain, and the brain is a muscle as well as an organ, so I wondered if they were connected, because if you go to the gym and work a particular part of your body, the blood rushes to that muscle, doesn't it?
"I was talking to a psychiatrist friend about it and he said, 'You might have ADHD.' I said, 'How can I? I can focus for hours on one subject.' But that's actually classic ADHD. If you're interested in something, you do focus, and if you're not, you can't. That's how I found out."
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