We'll Drink To That!

A tabloid journalist’s dream, Oliver Reed spent a thirty-year career balancing his considerable talent with an irresistable urge to self-destruct. A fine actor, Reed was often irritated by the emphasis that was placed on his drinking above his career. At the time of Oliver!’s success he was one of the highest paid stars in the country, and was reputedly only a whisker away from bagging the part of James Bond, after Sean Connery vacated the role. Inevitably however, his acting would become increasingly overshadowed by his extracurricular activities, with every film shoot seeming to generate another string of debauched anecdotes. And despite what he might occasionally have claimed, Ollie revelled in his notoriety: ‘I’ve always liked being called a hellraiser. The sad thing is that I’m the last of them. There was O’Toole, Harris and I was the baby. Now I’m the only one carrying the baton.’ A baton that has not been carried in quite the same way since. 10 years after his death, we raise a glass to the life of the last Great British hellraiser.

1938- ‘I have a pride in my family; with all their eccentricities and gentleness and madness and genius and backwardness and greatness and nothingness’.

Born Robert Oliver Reed in Wimbledon to Peter Reed, a sports journalist, and his wife Marcia. Reed discards the name ‘Robert’, and is known only as Oliver.

1947- ‘I looked like Charles Bronson dressed up as a Boy Scout.’

Already old beyond his years, Ollie experiences his first sexual encounter, courtesy of a  teenage Swedish nanny named Ingmar, who slipped into bed with he and his brother, ‘Just to zee if you are varm enough’. Reed would later lament, ‘In school, when boys would say that girls get excited and get babies if you push your donger into them, I mourned for Ingmar.’

1951- ‘If you think of the most difficult teenager coping with an exaggerated chip on his shoulder, you have just a fraction of what it was like for my parents trying to live with Oliver. He was impossible to control. My father threw him out so many times, but each time he would come back. The peace would last for about a week and then there would be another enormous row and he was gone again.’ (Oliver’s brother, Simon)

Oliver hits his teens and becomes more of a handful, getting expelled from a string of schools and continually straining against the leash.

1955- ‘I assumed from the outset I’d be successful.’

Runs away from home at the age of 17 to become a bouncer at a strip club in Soho, before a very brief career as a boxer: ‘I won the first fight, lost the next, then decided I didn't like being hit’. Also worked as a mini-cab driver and mortuary attendant.

1956- ‘Contrary to popular belief, I am not the greatest crumpet bumper of all time.’

Joins the army as part of the Royal Army Medical Corps. When posted in Hong Kong, he wastes no time heading to a brothel with a group of Scots soldiers. After being led away by an old Chinese woman in her eighties, Ollie gets stage fright and remains a virgin. ‘Tommy have too much beer’ spits the whore, contemptuously.

1959- ‘I feed them, wine them, make them laugh and give them a punch on the nose and a good kicking when they need it.’ (Reed on women)

Marries Kate Byrne. When he first meets the 18 year-old model, she is engaged, and Reed is already indulging in an affair with another woman. He sees no problem with the arrangement: ‘I shuffled my dates and had an affair with both of them at the same time.’

1960- ‘Everyone told me not to do horror films, but I wanted to act. I remember standing on a table blowing bubble gum as a child and everyone applauded. I like that.’

Reed bags his first major film role in Hammer production ‘Sword of Sherwood’. He goes on to star in a series of films for the company throughout the early 60’s including ‘The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll’ (1960), ‘The Curse of the Werewolf’ (1961) and ‘Pirates of Blood River’ (1962).

1963- ‘It’s impossible for me to go into a pub without having a few problems. It’s a bit like the  gunfight at the OK Corral every time. There’s always someone who wants to take me on.’

Whilst in a West End Nightclub, Reed is heckled by a gang of lads, who he promptly threatens. Minutes later he is glassed and beaten to a pulp. Never one to go down easily, he stumbles outside and manages to hail a cab. The driver complains, ‘All that blood’s going to fuck up my cab,’ only to be met with the furious response, ‘Fuck your cab. Get me to hospital.’ He is eventually patched up with 36 stitches.

1967- Appears in Michael Winner comedy The Jokers alongside Michael Crawford. Crawford would later tell of Reed’s notorious tendency to ‘live’ the role he was playing, in this case a man who throttles his brother. ‘As we shot the scene, suddenly my life wasn’t worth tuppence. His hands were fastened so tightly round my neck, I felt the end of my life was imminent. It took four people to get him off me.’

1968- Stars as Bill Sikes in the multi-Oscar winning musical Oliver! At one cast party, Reed gets child stars Mark Lester and Jack Wild violently drunk by spiking their cokes with vodka.

1968- ‘Being nice doesn’t particularly interest me and I only do things if they interest me.’

Reed is at the centre of more mayhem whilst filming the wartime drama Hannibal Brooks. Austrian locals are furious as a boozed-up Ollie tears down the Austrian flag from outside the crew’s hotel and urinates upon it. Then in Germany he enters a bar decorated with every national flag save Britain’s. Grabbing the terrified manager, Reed snarls, ‘I’m coming back tomorrow night. If you haven’t got a Union Jack by then I’m going to trash this place.’ There is no Union Jack the following night so Reed puts a bar stool through the window.

1969- ‘The only embarrassment I suffered was when an old fruit wolf-whistled me in the King’s Road’

Stars in DH Lawrence adaptation Women in Love, famous for containing the first scene of full-frontal male nudity in legitimate cinema. Director Ken Russell initially suggests transposing the book’s nude scene from country house to an outdoors night scene, to prevent the audience seeing so much. Reed wrestles Russell to the floor until he agrees to do the scene as it appears in the book.

1969- Reed is considered for the role of James Bond by producer Cubby Broccoli, only to be passed over in favour of George Lazenby, in what The Guardian describes as, ‘one of the great missed opportunities of post-war British movie history.’

1971- Stars in the Ken Russell film The Devils, as the sexually voracious priest, Urbain Grandier. The project is initially in jeopardy when Reed tells an anxious producer he won’t learn the Latin in the script: ‘I’m not a scholar. If I wanted to be a scholar I would have gone to Cambridge. The only reason I didn’t go to university was because I can’t spell, I can’t add up and I can’t sodding well stand Latin. Now I want off this film because I didn’t sign up to read a script that was full of Latin. So tell Ken Russell to piss off.’ Most of the Latin is promptly cut.

1972- ‘I love the thought of a lot of girls masturbating over a nude picture of me.’

At a press conference for his film Triple Echo, Reed is challenged to prove his boasts about the size of his manhood, or as he refers to it, ‘my snake of desire, my wand of lust, my mighty mallet.’ He promptly drops his trousers and flashes the end of his penis. When questioned as to why he hasn’t shown it in full his response is instant: ‘Madam, if I’d have pulled it out in its entirety, I’d have knocked your hat off.’

1973- ‘I’m always wondering whether I’ve got to apologise for my behaviour last night.’

Stars as Aramis in The Three Musketeers. Whilst filming in Madrid, Reed strips off during dinner before jumping into a large tank of goldfish. When the police are summoned, Reed refuses to go quietly, shouting, ‘Leave me alone. You can't touch me - I'm one of the Four Musketeers!’

1974- Reed continues to collaborate with Ken Russell, popping up in various bit-part roles. He appears as a railway guard for a single scene in Mahler, accepting three bottles of Dom Perignon as payment.

1978- Appears in Michael Winner’s film The Big Sleep. Arriving on set one morning, Reed accosts Winner and co-star Robert Mitchum with the announcement, ‘I have damaged my balls. I must show you.’ Removing his trousers and underpants, Reed proceeds to examine himself in front of the entire crew.

1979- Publishes his autobiography, Reed All About Me. Tells an interviewer, ‘It’s a load of old bollocks really’.

1982- Stars in the critically acclaimed Castaway opposite Amanda Donahue. The two co-stars endure a fractious relationship, with rumours leaked to the press that Reed deliberately exposed himself in front of Donahue. She goes on to describe Ollie as  ‘a pain in the arse’. Ollie on the other hand describes the experience as, ‘a dream film’.

1984- ‘I do not live in the world of sobriety.’

A stay in Guernsey sees more erratic behaviour from Reed, as one drunken evening sees him dive headfirst out of his bedroom window, over several yards of tiled terrace, into the hotel pool. The year is also marked by his famously inebriated appearance on the talk show Aspel’s People, where he performs an excruciating version of ‘Wild One’.

1985-‘I think ideally a woman should behave like an angel to my friends, a nun in the street and a whore in the bedroom.’

Reed marries the 21-year old Josephine Burgess, claiming somewhat optimistically that, ‘She’s the one who has tamed me, she’s the one who has put to rest once and for all the demon hellraiser, Oliver Reed.’

1987-‘I’m only an actor, not a priest beyond reproach…I’m just a tawdry character who explodes…but I do know that society needs its goodies and baddies’

Reed’s drunkenness continues to get him into problems on and off-screen. He has to be restrained from exposing himself on Des O’Connor Tonight, whilst drinkers in a working men’s club are outraged as he slaps a fifty pound note on the bar and instructs the barman to, ‘Get all the working-class pigs a drink.’

1991- ‘A woman’s role in society depends on whether or not she wants to get shafted.’

Ollie is invited by Channel 4 to appear on a late night discussion show to debate the issue, ‘Do Men Need to Be Violent?’ Well lubricated by the free bar, Reed attempts to kiss feminist writer Kate Millet, who he refers to as ‘Big Tits’ throughout, before telling her, ‘I’ve had more punch-ups in pubs than you’ve had hot dinners darling.’

1995- Moves to county Cork, fulfilling a long-lived dream to live in Ireland. Reed is soon invited on to comedy-vacuum Patrick Kielty’s chat show, spending several hours drinking before going on air. Kielty asks Reed how long he has been living in Ireland, but is stumped by Reed’s response: ‘Young man…how long…is your dick?’

1999- ‘Richard Burton was hitting the bottle with Jimmy Hurt the night before his death. He knew it was going to kill him, but he did not stop. I don’t have a drink problem. But if that was the case and doctors told me I would have to stop, I’d like to think I would be brave enough to drink myself into the grave.’

Reed dies of a heart attack in Malta, where he is shooting his final film, Gladiator. The bar where he spent his last hours, now bears the sign ‘Ollie’s Last Pub’. His final binge sees him run up a £440 bar tab, seeing off three bottles of rum, eight bottles of beer and several double whiskeys. He is also alleged to have beaten five Royal Navy soldiers at arm wrestling.

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