Stephen Fry has revealed he took cocaine in Buckingham Palace, BBC Television Centre and the House of Lords.

In the third instalment of his autobiography, published yesterday, he wrote: "There is no getting away from it. I am confessing to having broken the law and consumed, in public places, Class A sanctioned drugs. I have brought, you might say, gorgeous palaces, noble properties and elegant honest establishments into squalid disrepute."

"I take this opportunity to apologise unreservedly, to the owners, managers or representatives of the noble and ignoble premises and to the hundreds of private homes, offices, car dashboards, tables, mantelpieces and available polished surfaces that could so easily have been added to this list of shame."

In his book, More Fool Me, Fry writes about his 15-year addiction to the drug, in which he spent thousands on his habit. He says: "By the end of the 1980s I would no more consider going out in the evening without three or four grams of cocaine safely tucked in my pocket than I would consider going out without my legs."

He adds: "I wouldn't recommend cocaine to my worst enemy."