Articles/Interviews

By Brian O'Hanlon

He doesn't mess about. Biker, monster, nude wrestler, dream lover... Oliver Reed's burly good looks have enhanced dozens of movies over the last two decades. His off-stage adventures are equally newsworthy, but here he tells us how it really is.

Oliver Reed? Shakespeare put this hell-raising, hard-drinking superstar into perspective 500 years ago in The Merchant of Venice:
    Let me play the fool; with mirth
  and laughter let old
  wrinkles come.
    And why should a man,
  whose blood is warm within,
  sleep like his grandsire, cut in
  alabaster, and his heart ever
  cool with mortifying
  groans...'

Mortifying groans? Oh, yes. My dearly beloved heard them emerging from the back garden rockery the evening I returned to deepest Buckinghamshire afer interviewing Mr Reed, at his Guernsey retreat.

The next door neighbour's cat had complained of the noise.

But let me begin at the starting. I had gone over for the day armed with an editorial brief to talk to Oliver Reed about physical fitness, drinking, diet - and hangovers. I had taken the first plane out from Heathrow, bright-eyed and bushy tailed, and had entered Old Government House hotel the courtesy ten minutes before the appointment time of 10.15.

'Oliver Reed sir?' said the bloke in Reception, looking I thought, a touch concerned. 'He's not staying here. I mean, I know he's not...'

'But I am to meet him here.' I insisted. 'Where does he usually sit?'

'Er, the garden, sir. Right outside overlooking the bay. It's a lovely day. I mean, it's better than yesterday when we had the Battle of Britain fly past and there was low cloud.

'Er, would you care for a drink, sir?'

'No.'

'No.?'

'Oh.'

'Good morning. You are early. We last met in Dublin, wasn't it?' said the milk chocolate voice behind me. Mr Reed in person, looking very fit and relaxed in tinted, rimless glasses, with what appeared to be a crack in the left-hand one.

I mention that last time we met at Dublin's Gresham Hotel he had greeted me in Ascot topper, bath towel, and a bottle of Chablis, and that in the intervening seven years he had disappeared up the chimney of a local Dorking pub one Christmas, and had recently, according to utterly peach-able sources, spent a couple of nights in the local 'nick'.

Oliver sighs, the waiter hovers. 'We will have coffee and biscuits first, and talk, then play afterwards.' he says.

'You see that window up there, the one on the second floor above the pool? Well, it's bolted down. You can't open it. They did that because I used to dive in the pool from it. One day I had the whole of the staff lined up the other side and offered each man £50 to dive in, too, fully clothed. They all did, including the head waiter, who couldn't swim. He went into the children's paddling pool, next to the big one, and simply lay down kicking up his legs in the water.

'No, no. I'm still allowed to come here, but not stay here. Everybody is very charming. It is just that there are never any rooms...

He reads my brief, nods his head, and away we go.

'When I am going to stop drinking we pack up at about four the evening before. We decide we have had enough. It is then a Double L day; drinking lime juice and making love. You then watch television all evening and eat chicken and bread sauce. With gravy. Without potato.'

'Next; a long soak in the bath, thinking what harm you are doing to your body, remembering the lectures you have been given over the years about the perils of excess; and then you go to bed, breathe heavily and get 'the sweats' and become anxious. You are worried that you are worried that you are worried...' 'Um, what about the shakes?' 'The shakes? I do not get the shakes, and I do not see blackbirds in striped waistcoats sitting on the end of my bed. Alsatians in doorways, perhaps, who are not there, but definitely not bloody blackbirds in waistcoats.'

'Who does see these blackbirds?'

'I can't disclose his name. He's in Parliament, of course.'

'Anyway' - Oliver continues - 'The sweats and anxiety; you think you are the only one with a stop drinking problem, completely forgetting there are at least ten million others in this world at any given time of the day who have also come to the momentous decision that too much alcohol is bad for you.'

'Finally, when the sweats go, I am in the clear. I then go out and walk the dogs. We have 'Virginia Water', a Border Terrier, and a Jack Russell called 'Rabbit', but I don't won an Alsatian. Well, not all the time...'

'If you ever have to go through the thing of sobering up, get out and walk about. Don't whatever you do, stay in. When I first began to fell the effects of drinking sprees I tried to jog but that wasn't much good. Then I met the Queen's anaesthetist who told me to walk very fast instead. He explained it happens because your brain has not got enough oxygen and begins to swell. Then pressures begin to come on. I think he might have been speaking from personal experience rather than case histories, so I immediately took his advice and it worked!

'I first had drinking problems when I was 32, in Barbados, which was 14 years ago. I heard pigeons and doves caw cawing, and this great feeling of anxiety first engulfed me. But they went away, you know.'

'A lot of drinking is purely social. People loosen their inhibitions. When I have a 'dry' period I go into a pub with Josephine - my girlfriend - and find myself whispering to her: 'Do I actually go on like that?' when I listen to all the waffle. 'Yes', she says. 'You certainly do!' '

We turn to a shared love. Rugby Football Union; the old amateur game. Ollie played for Rosslyn Park's Extra A's as a flanker (wing forward). The Royal Air Force flag flutters from its sock in the morning sunlight down the garden terrace. Today would have been ideal for the fly past. Oliver, now serious again, reflects: 'Do you know, I miss the innocence of those days, when eight pints was all it took. We were all too fit. Drinking and training, training and drinking.'

His pensive mood continues as he switches to a fresh thought. 'If you are on the dole you cannot fail to be anything else but fit because you can't afford to drink. If you can afford it that is when it conflicts most with the demands of your work; when it is much more difficult to get into shape. Take sword fighting. I've done quite a bit of filming with it. Dick Lester, when he directed The Musketeers, used to make us take the whole thing in one. Five minutes, non-stop. You had to be enormously fit. I don't think I would do it in one 'take' again. I would find some reason why it would be better for several short 'takes' instead.'

We are joined by Josephine. A rare English beauty; and the only woman I have ever met who can make a pair of corduroy slacks look sexy. We are also enjoined with large gins and things, as I ask about the Reed pile of bricks in Surrey which he sold last year - Broom Hall. What happened to his horses? He was a keen horseman, and they were one of the means by which Mr Reed kept fit for filming engagements.

Alas, the horses were sold when Broom Hall went. 'We now have something a good deal smaller not very far away.

'What I did was to buy a race horse and called it 'The 'Orse', but the Jockey Club turned the name down. 'Sup-posin', m'dear chap', they said to me, 'the bally thing won at Askit? We simply could not have The Queen in the winner's enclosure stroking 'The 'Orse'. And what about the race commentaries? The whole thing would be an absolute shambles if someone, such as Julian Wilson, had to say: '...and now we have Rajah in the lead from Admiral Plum; Percy's Price coming up fast on the rails, Adelaide next, followed by The 'Orse...'

'So now he's called 'Go On My Son', 'Minder'-fashion, from the boxing crowd's favourite saying when they are watching the fights.

'I've got a horse now, one third share, which I gave to Josephine. It's owned, collectively, by a dining club of which I am a founder member; The Grey Top Society. Formed to combat the onslaught of Grecian 2000.'

'I am grey. I do not mind being grey. I have a 'derby' (gut). I do not mind having a 'derby'. I eat good food and I don't care about putting on a little weight.'

'If you are getting grey haired and your face is becoming a little lined then all you do is to play different parts. I will become more of a character actor, instead of a leading man, as indeed I was when I started my career.'

'But I refuse to behave like some of the Americans. They all pump iron, and I certainly don't want to spend the rest of my life in a jogging suit.'

'They said to me on the set. We can't have a man with grey hair kissing a girl, but I absolutely refuse to go around like Paul Newman, sticking my head in buckets of cold water.'

Oliver Reed warms to his theme and switches to the opposite sex. 'There is too much these days; too much aerobics, health clubs, health kicks. As far as I am concerned ladies should sweat in bed and not in a gymnasium in a pair of leotards. I prefer ladies in frocks and glowing as they should be.'

'Pundits are always trying to change things. Whoever said the Pre-Raphaelites were wrong in their liking for large ladies was wrong himself. It wasn't only Debussy who thought thin-ness.'

'I drink because I enjoy it. I enjoy company; my friends, and strangers I meet. New friends. I don't complain what is sometimes written about me. Most of it has a grain of truth, but things do become exaggerated. Take the business of going up the chimney of that local Dorking pub, near my own village, a couple of Christmases ago. It was something I had been doing every year, not just that one. But the old tenant went and in came a manager; the place changed. The new bloke wanted to throw his weight about and create a fuss. No-one else minded. It was good fun. Josephine has been up the chimney, too, and all I did was to pay for her coat to be cleaned...'

Here, Oliver Reed is not complaining, simply stating facts. Like the sinking of the Belgrano, Edward and Mrs Simpson, and the new Talgarth Road interchange at Baron's Court, he is a subject upon which there are never three opinions. After my bout of alcoholic amnesia, which lasted from the time I left his generous lunchtime hospitality in Guernsey to when I awakened next to next door's tabby on my rockery, I went into the pub the following morning for not only a hair of the dog, but every son of a bitch I could find.

'Oh, yes?' said Brian, the Governor, 'How was the old sod?' He used to drink at my first pub in Camden Town. 'What? Nah! Never any trouble. Good as gold...'

'Bleedin' Reedy', said the film cameraman, who lives down the road at Datchet. 'Christ... I met him when I was working with him in Czechoslovakia on a film. He comes up to me and says: 'Do you want a fight?' 'No', I says. 'But if it comes I can't run away.' We got on from that moment. He had his 'minder', Prince, with him. One night I saw Princey chop down a dozen Czechs, when they started having a go...'

'Well, I think it's bloody disgusting.' said Ken, the pub grouch to me. I mean, a man of your age not remembering your flight home and waking up on your arse in the rockery, and him in Guernsey running through the streets without any clothes on...'

'I think', said Helen, the voluptuous barperson, ending the conversation with her usual picturesque turn of phrase, 'that Oliver Reed looks better with his clothes off than you do Ken with your fucking things on!'

I was going over to see Oliver a fortnight before but the holiday weekend, and prison intervened. Before we begin lunch, and I sip my second large American martini, I enquire of him what, exactly happened. What really went on?

'I broke a window, quite accidentally, in this hotel, trying to open it. It was �10 to get it replaced and I obviously would have paid, but the police outside told me to go back in. I came back and thought: 'Why should they speak to me like that? I've done nothing wrong?' - so I went outside again, and back, once more, they sent me. Everyone was laughing and joking, so I went out a third time and put my 'dukes' up, laughing all over my face, saying: 'Come on, come on, if you want a fight...' and they took me into the concrete barracks here; the prison. As it was the weekend and a bank holiday they kept me in until the Court sat Tuesday morning.'

'I didn't eat a thing. I met an old lag who said it would get full as it was Saturday night and everyone would have to double up, so I could share with him, if I wanted. We were let out for short exercise breaks on both days I was there. Oh, and 20 minutes visiting is all they allow on Guernsey. The second day they gave us a football to kick around but everyone ignored it; then I was told I had a visitor. I thought it would be Josephine bringing a clean change of clothing, but it was a crime journalist from Fleet Street, who had used his know-how to get in to try and get an exclusive. A crime man! Ridiculous!'

'When I came out I gave a press conference and all the dailies were very good and printed exactly what happened, but the Sundays still wanted a 'go' at the bone so they began poking and prying, and inventing things, such as I was supposed to have said I lost my temper because someone insulted The Queen.'

'The incident even made Time. It wasn't even a storm in a teacup, but the advocates - the lawyers - have great power here, and I suspect that I was heavily fined not because of what I was alleged to have done but because of who I was.

'When my mother heard about it she said, 'So what?'. My son said: 'That's Pop, isn't it?''

'My life is really one big scrum. I know that once I get into the company of the lads again things such as that incident will, inevitably, happen again.'

'Some people come up and say to me: 'Why don't you be more discreet, because we all do it, but you, silly bugger, get caught.'

'The thing I liked best was when a grey-haired old lady here in Guernsey came up to me in the street, took one of my hands in hers, and smacked it lightly with her free hand, saying: 'Naughty boy!''

'But when I'm working I am not drinking. I look at the script, sometimes think to myself: 'Oh, God, I can never do this,' then close it, make up my mind, go upstairs and read everything and learn it. I like working commitment. That is what motivates me most of all, apart, of course, from Josephine.'

What separates Oliver Reed, in my opinion, from the rest of us, in addition to his undoubted acting ability, is his cast-iron constitution, which he still takes for granted, since he's known no other.

When I returned to London and my desk, I rang his brother, David, who is his agent, to obtain photographs to illustrate this article. 'Did he mention anything at all?' I queried, guiltily, wondering whether I had behaved myself.

'Oh no', said David: 'Just had a note scrawled at the bottom of some document I sent over for him to sign, which read: 'Had the man from the rude magazine over last Friday. He wobbled home well ...'

In answer to your briefing, dear Editor, there is fitness and there is fitness, and there is Oliver Reed, who stands every rule on its head with gusto. I'll drink to that... but not just at the moment.