Articles/Interviews

Although the response to Bates's return to classical acting was warm, Steven Pimlott's production (Antony and Cleopatra) fared less happily. Both the opening scene of oral sex between the lovers and the death scenes, in which the corpses stand up and walk away, came under intense fire.

While Bates was happy to address himself to these, and other more personal matters, there was one image from the play that the critics seem to have missed that I wanted to put to him. During the bacchanalia of the galley scene, when Pompey's party has reached the height of drunkenness, Bates suddenly drops his trousers. This, I remembered, was a regular carousing trick of the late Oliver Reed.

Bates grinned broadly when I mentioned it. "Yes, you've got it. This is my tribute to Ollie. It was certainly inspired by him. When you get the amount of drinking and levity that the play describes then it is bound to get a bit silly. So I took a cue from my old friend. I can't tell you how many times I saw him in his cups, but never ever during work. He was totally there for the work, very professional, but in the rest of his life he was not, shall we say, in quite the same state. He could have had a career like this, you know," he continued, nodding towards the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. "Jonathan Miller once asked him to play Richard III. Now imagine what that could have been like."

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We returned to Ken Russell's film of "Women in Love." There can be no higher act of courage for an actor than to enter a naked wrestling contest with Oliver Reed, I suggested.

"Oh, I don't know," he smiled. "We both knew the scene was in the book and we would have to do it. The whole thing was very carefully choreographed. Ken set up four cameras so we would only have to do it once. We were due to rehearse it the day before but for some reason Ollie decided he wanted to rehearse separately."

I interrupted him to say that legend suggests Reed was worried that his manhood might not measure up to Bates's and was only persuaded to continue when he was assured of equality in that direction. Bates grinned again: "I think there may have been a bit of willie-watching from Ollie. I think he was a bit concerned. When you are the first people to do something like that it's easy to become a bit paranoid. But by the time shooting came it was the last thing on our minds. We did it in sections over a day and a half; it was quite shattering."