I was on the brink of killing myself, says Chris Langham

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The disgraced comedy actor Chris Langham said yesterday that he was almost driven to suicide by the disclosure that he had been looking at pornographic images of children. Less than a week after his release from a prison sentence for downloading child pornography, Langham, 58, began a desperate attempt to restore his shattered reputation. He insisted that he was not a paedophile, instead claiming that he had feared that he would stumble across pictures on the internet of himself being abused as an eight-year-old boy. The star of The Thick of It told Sky News that he had been on the verge of gassing himself when it became public that he had been arrested in connection with downloading the pictures. He said that he had been looking for a pipe to attach to his car exhaust when an alcoholic friend who was himself suicidal telephoned. It was when talking his friend out of killing himself that Langham realised that he too should not take his own life, he said. He repeated the claim made at his trial that he had downloaded the child pornography to inspire his writing. He said: “It was wrong of me to look and I’m sorry that I did, and I paid a heavy price for it.” He said that he had not paid for the images and had looked at “only” four of the fifteen that police found on his computer. Speaking at his home in Kent, he said: “Of the four that I saw, I only saw the first few seconds of them because I couldn’t bear it.” Zoe Hilton, of the NSPCC, said: “I don’t want to comment on what led him to do what he has done, but it’s important to establish the principle that there’s never a justification for looking at such images. I would be concerned if there was any attempt to minimise the crime that has been committed.”