‘These Things Happen’: Six shocking stories from Greg Fleet’s memoir

IN HIS new book, Greg Fleet details his shocking drug addiction and the time that TV show Neighbours saved him from being stabbed.

Buy a copy of Fleet’s new book, I guarantee you won’t regret it.

GREG Fleet’s new book, These Things Happen, is brutally honest.

I know you often hear that term bandied around, but trust me, it’s the best way to describe the comedian’s shocking/hilarious/disturbing memoir, in which he details his several brushes with death during his 30-year-long heroin addiction.

The must read book is full of unbelievable stories which will make you laugh, cry and gasp in horror.

Below are some tasters from a handful of the amazing stories Fleet tells in These Things Happen, which hits bookshelves today:

Fleet reveals just how much money he’s spent on heroin: “Twice a day, $100 a time ... I did this for over thirty years — that’s longer than many of my friends have been alive. And a couple of million dollars.”

In 2003, as a member of the 2Day FM breakfast radio team, Fleet and his family, along with his co-hosts and a bunch of radio listeners, were flown to the Gold Coast to experience the different theme parks. But Fleet became desperate for a hit: “I told my wife and child that I was going out to get cigarettes from a nearby shop. I then kissed them both goodbye, walked out of the hotel, got a cab to the airport, flew to Sydney, scored heroin and made it back to the hotel about ten hours later.”

When he was drunk and high on a cocktail of marijuana and ecstasy pills, Fleet once hooked up with a gay friend called James: “Up until that point (and even more so since that time) I confidently, and without judgment, identified myself as a heterosexual man. I’ve had my little go batting for the other team, and while it was interesting, I am all about the vagina these days. But for those few hours in Hepburn Springs, I was the gayest man on the f**king planet.”

In order to get money for heroin, Fleet would lie to friends by telling them he needed cash because something terrible had happened to one of his family members: “I got so lost in the lies that I lost track of what I said to who. Sometimes I would be chatting with someone and mention my mother:

Them: I thought your mother died?

(Panicked pause)

Me: Oh, no ... that was my stepmother ... she died.”

Hard to put down.

Fleety back in 1996.

He was almost slashed with a razor in Edinburgh in 1996 in a drug deal gone wrong, until the dealers recognised Fleet from Neighbours (he’s had two guest roles on the soap): “At this point, everything changed. Browney got crazy with excitement. He pocketed his razor. ‘You were in farkin’ Neighbours?!!! All right!’

Browney threw and arm over my shoulder. ‘All right, let’s get this man some heroin!’”

When Fleet was 10 years old, his dad faked his own death, assumed a new identity as William Lee, married another woman and had two kids, only to be found by Fleet’s mum three years later: “He then performed the stunt that made him famous: he dumped the Lee family. Brutally.

“I don’t know how or why my mother ever thought it was a good idea, but my parents moved back in together and picked up where they had left off.”

These Things Happen by Greg Fleet, published by Pan Macmillan, is available now. Read an exclusive extract of the book here.

Originally published as ‘These Things Happen’: Six shocking stories from Greg Fleet’s memoir