Oliver reed authorised biography of george

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Oliver Reed may not have been Britain's biggest film star - for a period in the early 70s he came within a hairsbreadth of replacing Sean Connery as James Bond - but he is an august member of that small band of people, like George Best and Eric Morecambe, who transcended their chosen medium, became too big for it even, and grew into cultural icons.

For the first time Reed's close family has agreed to collaborate on a project about the man himself. The result is a fascinating new insight into a man seen by many as merely a brawling, boozing hellraiser. And yet he was so much more than this. For behind that image, which all too often he played up to in public, was a vastly complex individual, a man of deep passions and loyalty but also deep-rooted vulnerability and insecurities. Why was a proud, patriotic, intelligent, successful and erudite man so obsessed about proving himself to others, time and time again? Although the Reed myth is of Homeric proportions, he remains a national treasure and somewhat peculiar icon.

At 3. 12am in the Watergate Hotel , Washington DC, on February 16th, 1985, I was awoken from a jet-lagged coma by the shattering of glass, and loud oaths. With racing heart I found the light which revealed an inebriated apparition fixing me with a rheumy and strabismic eye.

“On yer facking feet, McGuigan,” it roared, huge hams of fists windmilling. “I’m not Barry McGuigan, Oliver!” I croaked, attempting to bring my voice down to a manly calm. He lunged at me blindly like a bull to a red cape and collided with a table, whereupon he came face to face with his reflection in the mirror .

Immediately he straightened, barked at himself and then saluted: “Reed, Oliver. Corporal 18th field ambulance corps SAH,” he shouted as if on parade. Dressed in a rugby shirt and the trousers of an evening suit he sported also satin ballet slippers. There was a vivid gash of blood visible in his scalp.

Then, just as suddenly, he reverted to his pugilist self: “Come on, lady boy, let’s be ’avin yer then.”

“Barry is in the bar and he says he’s going to punch your lights out,” I said, as I heaved the great girth of him through the door. I lay on the sofa fearing I might expire of a heart attack as I heard him bawling for the non-existent McGuigan to come out like a man and take his knuckle sandwich.

We had starred together in a picture some months before, and now were here to attend a press conference to publicise the final product. I was filming in London so the producers decided to fly both of us by Concorde for the day. My heart sank when I realised I would be travelling inside the equivalent of a fountain pen at Mach 2 with Bill Sykes and no possibility of egress. Trepidation turned to elation when I was inf

Oliver Reed may not have been Britain's biggest film star - for a period in the early 70s he came within a hairsbreadth of replacing Sean Connery as James Bond - but he is an august member of that small band of people, like George Best and Eric Morecambe, who transcended their chosen medium, became too big for it even, and grew into cultural icons.

For the first time Reed's close family has agreed to collaborate on a project about the man himself. The result is a fascinating new insight into a man seen by many as merely a brawling, boozing hellraiser. And yet he was so much more than this. For behind that image, which all too often he played up to in public, was a vastly complex individual, a man of deep passions and loyalty but also deep-rooted vulnerability and insecurities. Why was a proud, patriotic, intelligent, successful and erudite man so obsessed about proving himself to others, time and time again? Although the Reed myth is of Homeric proportions, he remains a national treasure and somewhat peculiar icon.