Paul Sinha has opened up about experiencing "inexplicable tantrums", tears, and "bizarre" reactions due to his Parkinson's medication.
In his 2024 memoir, One Sinha Lifetime: Comedy, disaster and one man's quest for happiness, the Chaser recounted how the drugs wreaked havoc on his mental state back in 2019.
Paul, 54, who was diagnosed with Parkinson's that year, detailed the extreme side effects that once saw him breaking down in a Harvester and attempting to start an altercation with a fellow train passenger.
He penned: "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," reports the Express.
The most troublesome drug for him was ropinirole, as per his account, which is prescribed for Parkinson's and restless legs syndrome and can help with tremors and movement issues, the NHS says.
Despite boosting his dopamine levels and spurring a burst of creativity that led to him writing a new show in mere weeks, Paul also faced a slew of odd side effects.
Known as The Sinnerman on ITV's The Chase, the star revealed that he began to feel more erratic, unpredictable and prone to emotional outbursts, experiencing a mix of typical and unusual side effects.
This emotional rollercoaster was set against a hectic year for the TV favourite: he'd recently gotten engaged and sold out a string of performances in New Zealand.
He also enjoyed time on Taskmaster and celebrated a win at the British Quizzing Championships, but Paul found himself being dubbed the "poster boy" for early-onset Parkinson's disease.
Paul's initial symptoms were an incident of urinary incontinence and a rigid shoulder, which initially didn't ring alarm bells.
Despite being the "healthiest" amongst his family and suffering from a severe needle "phobia", Paul delayed visiting his GP until his parents eventually persuaded him to do so several 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."
However, on BBC Breakfast last month, Paul maintained a cheerful outlook. He shared that he was a "happy man", as long as his "brain functions" and he could realise his dreams of being a stand-up comedian and quizzer.