The Chase's Paul Sinha broke down in restaurant and 'picked a fight' due to medication
In his 2024 tell-all memoir, One Sinha Lifetime, Paul Sinha said his medication made him become more eccentric, and he would talk in rhyming couplets
Paul Sinha has revealed that he suffered from "inexplicable tantrums", tears, and "bizarre" side effects as a result of his Parkinson's medication.
In his 2024 tell-all memoir, One Sinha Lifetime: Comedy, disaster and one man's quest for happiness, the TV quizzer said the medication was "playing havoc" with his mental health in 2019.
Paul, 54, who was diagnosed with the condition in the same year, said the side effects were so severe that he once broke down in a restaurant and tried to pick a fight with someone on a train.
Paul wrote: "In recent weeks, I had broken down in a Harvester for no reason whatsoever. In another incident, I had tried to pick a fight with a train passenger about the volume of his phone conversation.
"Both consciously and unconsciously, I'd started talking in rhyming couplets. Rhyming couplets and clumsy falls - my life was like Lin-Manuel Miranda meets Miranda."
He said the medication that caused him the most problems was ropinirole, which is used to treat both Parkinson's and restless legs syndrome and can ease tremors, slowness and stiffness, according to the NHS.
Paul said he experienced elevated dopamine levels, boosting his creativity and leading to him writing a new full-length show in just a few weeks, but there were several strange side effects.
The star, who is known as The Sinnerman on ITV's The Chase, felt he had become more eccentric, temperamental and liable to flare up in anger and break down in tears, with Paul suffering from both common and more rare side effects.
To make matters worse, much of this occurred in an exceptionally busy year for the TV funnyman, as he had just gotten engaged and sold out a series of shows in New Zealand.
He said he was enjoying a stint on Taskmaster and had won the British Quizzing Championships, but had fast become the "poster boy" for early-onset Parkinson's disease.
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Paul said the first symptoms he noticed were an episode of urinary incontinence and a stiff shoulder, but he didn't worry about it too much.
However, the quizzer put off visiting his doctor as he was the "healthiest" member of his family and had a severe injection "phobia", before his parents eventually convinced him to go months later.
In a blog post at the time, he wrote: "On the evening of Thursday May 30th, an experienced consultant neurologist calmly informed me that I had Parkinson’s disease.
"It was a devastating denouement to a medical odyssey that began in September 2017 with a sudden-onset, frozen right shoulder, and took in an unexpected diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes, a lifestyle transformation that enabled me to lose two stone, and a shoulder operation in January this year."
Paul remains optimistic, however, revealing on BBC Breakfast last month that he's a "happy man", providing his "brain functions" and he can still fulfil his dreams of being a stand-up comedian and quizzer.
