Oliver Reed: What Fresh Lunacy is This? by Robert Sellers

Author:Robert Sellers [Sellers, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Memoir
ISBN: 9781472101143
Publisher: Constable & Robinson
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Moon the Loon

Early one morning the peace of Broome Hall was shattered by an ear-piercing roar that seemed to be coming from overhead. ‘What the bloody hell is that?’ yelled Ollie. Outside, a helicopter was making several sweeps over the house looking for a suitable place to land. Adjacent to the terrace and the rose garden was an open field and the whirring machine deposited itself on it. Oliver stormed out of the house, ranting and raving, then suddenly the door of the helicopter opened and out stepped Keith Moon. ‘And Oliver’s face was a picture,’ says Jacquie. ‘They ran up to each other and they hugged and they kissed. “I’ve come for lunch,” announced Moonie. He ended up staying a week.’

The helicopter was a spectacular show of ostentation and Ollie was suitably impressed. Grabbing Moonie, he took him on a guided tour of Broome Hall and its grounds. Afterwards Moon suggested they play a game. As Ollie remembered it, ‘I was supposed to run round the fields while he chased after me with the car to see if he could hit me.’ Exhausted but still alive, Ollie suggested they head off for a liquid lunch at the Cricketers, where Moon failed hopelessly to keep up with his host. Victorious, Ollie proceeded to take his clothes off but was hauled back home before exposing himself to the local punters. How had all this madness come about, this merging of the film and rock worlds? Blame Ken Russell.

Since their fraught experience on The Devils Oliver and Russell had patched things up, with Ollie appearing very briefly as a railway guard in the director’s recent Mahler for the princely sum of three bottles of Dom Pérignon. More importantly, Ollie wanted Russell to direct a project he was working on about the four knights who murdered Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral. Oliver had helped write the script and also expressed an interest in producing and starring in it. Invited round to Broome Hall to discuss the film, Russell must have twigged that something was up when Ollie opened the door dressed in his Athos costume, bowing and donning his hat with theatrical absurdity. ‘Welcome, your eminence.’ Russell should have bolted there and then. ‘I knew I was going to be put to the test again.’ But no, professional curiosity won out.

Instead of discussing the project, all Ollie seemed to want to do was re-enact his musketeer heroics, walking about the great hall swishing a rapier with one hand and holding a glass of brandy in the other. ‘Shouldn’t we talk about this film of yours, Oliver?’ Russell asked, exasperated.

‘I’d clean forgotten about that,’ said Oliver, throwing the sword to the ground and walking across to the grand fireplace, where an ominous-looking broadsword hung on display. ‘The man in the shop swore this was a thousand years old.’ Carefully, with love almost, Ollie lifted down the sword. ‘I’m sure it’s authentic.’

Russell looked the thing up and down, all six foot of it. ‘It’s certainly very rusty.

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