Fern Britton attempted suicide

Fern Britton has revealed that she attempted suicide after battling with depression.

The TV presenter said her problems began in her early 20s when she was charged with drink-driving in a friend's car.

Banned from driving, Britton said she began to feel increasingly isolated and depression took its grip.

When she got her licence back at the age of 25 in the spring of 1983, she was also enduring the break-up of a relationship.

"One afternoon I decided I couldn't bear the pain any longer, and I sat down and opened a bottle of paracetamol," she writes in her autobiography, serialised in the Daily Mail.

"All I wanted was to sleep, sleep, sleep. I tipped the bottle, poured myself a handful of pills and swigged them down with whisky. I didn't take the whole bottle, as if I didn't know whether or not it was what I wanted."

A former boyfriend called just after Britton had taken the tablets and alerted his sister, who lived near to her home in Cornwall. Fern said she was "lucky" to be alive.

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