15/01/2025
The gay television personality and stand up comic Tony Slattery who found fame in the rapidly changing media world of the 1990's, has passed on at the age of sixty five, reports the Guardian newspaper. Mr Slattery died of a heart attack. He was a regular on night time television shows, especially on Channel Four, which in the nineties was considered the radical channel, full of alternative inventiveness. A punishing early nineties saw Mr Slattery appearing on mainstream as well as fringe television programmes, and his star was very much in the ascendent. However, his mental health was struggling. He later revealed that he was the survivor of abuse, and in 1996, he crashed with a cocaine and alcohol dependency. The latter persisted on and off, through the rest of his life. Although he was Cambridge educated and worked with luminaries of the alternative comedy scene, his working class background made him feel an outsider. For the remainer of his career, Mr Slattery battled mental illness and appeared sparingly but it is said that he delighted in performance and making people laugh. IN 2005, Mr Slattery appeared in the difficult quiz The Weakest Link, and won, donating his prize to the HIV charity Terrence Higgins Trust. In 2020 Slattery and his partner Mark Hutchinson were featured in an edition of the BBC Horizon series entitled "What's the Matter with Tony Slattery?" In a detailed examination of his mental health, childhood trauma and substance addictions, medical professionals concluded that Slattery continued to experience the effects of trauma relating to childhood abuse; was on the bipolar spectrum; and suffered alcohol dependence. Other achievements of Mr Slattery include co founding the Leicester Comedy Festival and being elected Rector of the University of Dundee. He appeared throughout his life as a guest on quiz shows, discussion programmes and podcasts. He is survived by Mark Michael Hutchinson, an actor and his partner since 1986.
