IT is so easy to imagine someone with a personality disorder as some snivelling relative of Gollum you should avoid like the plague just like it is simple to swear blind that England will win the next World Cup.

However can a mental illness be, instead, a step towards genius?

Creativity has always been linked to brilliance through the "artistic temperament" - that notorious moment of insight followed by an almighty low that sounds much more like bipolar than divine inspiration - and a study recently showed that 50 per cent of poets, 38 per cent of musicians and 20 per cent of painters suffer from that same "disease" - some of the most famous being Jackson Pollock, Tchaikovsky and Dickens. Even Einstein had dyslexia.

Many of the UK's treasured personalities have something "clinically wrong" with them which I think appeals to Britain's quirky style.

For example, the comedian Stephen Fry is probably the most adored man Hampstead ever spawned and suffers from severe Depression.

It is merely a question that is up for debate: instead of mental illnesses being the diagnosis everyone dreads, should they be the envy and making of us all?