By Cara Sulieman
TOP Scots comic Rhona Cameron has admitted she once sank methadone after befriending a drug addict and watched in a hazy stupor as fire-fighters stopped her pal throwing herself off a window ledge.
And she told that after making it big on the UK comedy circuit she now often wonders what became of her heroin addict ex flat-mate or if she has even survived.
As an aspiring young entertainer Cameron moved to London in 1990 and after weeks spent sleeping on floors of friends, finally moved into a bedsit in the city’s trendy Notting Hill.
Methadone stupor
It was there that she made friends with the drug addict, identified by Cameron only as Laura, and watched through a methadone stupor as the fire brigade carried out their rescue.
She confessed: “Shortly after moving in, I befriended the resident heroin addict, Laura. This was a bad idea.
“I used to hang out with her and her boyfriend. I remember on one evening after we’d been drinking an enormous amount of rum, I had a taste of her methadone.
“Things went a little hazy after that.
“Suddenly, we were in my room and the fire brigade has been called. They had to break down the door because Laura was threatening to jump off the window ledge.
“I often think of Laura and wonder if she’s still alive. It seems unlikely.”
“Not the way to live”
However Cameron said it still took another five years for her to move out, long after she was successful enough to afford a better home.
She said: “It’s all very well to live that way for a while, but it’s not the way to live for ever.
“There was nothing normal about my life back then – it was disturbing and it was amusing, but there was no in between.”
Cameron’s big break came in 1992 when she won the covered ‘So You Think You’re Funny Award’ from Channel 4.
Have I Got News for You
A decade of sell-out shows at the Edinburgh fringe, UK tours and frequent TV appearances on the likes of Have I Got News For You and Never Mind the Buzzcocks followed.
She even landed her on shows hosting four series of the BBC’s Gaytime TV and her first BBC sitcome, Rhona, in 2000 and had her first book, Naked Drinking Club, published in 2007.
Cameron is currently touring Scotland with her stand up show.
