Tales I Never Told! E-Book

Michael Winner

• Herausgeber: Biteback Publishing
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Seitenzahl: 475

Beschreibung

Michael Winner's new book Tales I Never Told! is scurrilous, affectionate and sometimes sensational! Winner's tales have a cast including Simon Cowell, Sir Michael Caine, Marlon Brando, Burt Lancaster, Faye Dunaway and many others of great fame and even some of less fame. The tales recount things that have happened in Winner's life. This is a man who lived with the stars and lived through extraordinary experiences. The book is a dazzling mix of genuine food 'expertise' - from the man who says he knows nothing about food but is arguably the most read food columnist in the world - and acerbic wit in telling the stories with which Michael has entertained his friends for years. Winner is full of surprises, none greater than when he married his long-time girlfriend Geraldine Lynton-Edwards in September 2011. His life has been extraordinary. At age fourteen he had a show column in twenty-seven newspapers. He was at Cambridge aged seventeen and came out with an Honours Degree in law and economics at twenty. He was, for a while, the youngest movie director in the English-speaking language. His career included decades in Hollywood and the producing and/or directing of some of the most famous films of the twentieth century, including the Death Wish series. His fi lms have been shown at the Venice, San Francisco and Cannes film festivals. In early 2011, the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles mounted a three-day tribute to him showing six of his movies, with Michael giving his well-known one-man show on one evening and speaking between movies on the others. He became a food critic by accident but has nevertheless been writing in the Sunday Times for over sixteen years. He has never missed a week - even when he was in intensive care and heavily dosed with morphine. The book also includes the last year of his Sunday Times reviews to bring people up to date with what is going on in that arena.

Leseprobe

This book is dedicated to Geraldine Lynton-Edwards my adorable, ever young ex-fiancée. Wisest thing I ever did was when I managed to bring her back into my life after many years of being apart. My powers of persuasion surprised even me… … but they worked! Whoopee!

Then things got even better. On 19 September 2011 we got married!

CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

FOREWORD

PART I: TALES I NEVER TOLD!

ARNOLD CRUST

IN THE OFFICE

CHARLES BRONSON

THE MECHANIC

DINING STARS

FAYE DUNAWAY

GLYNIS BARBER

RICHARD HARRIS

LA RÉSERVE DE BEAULIEU

MARGARET LOCKWOOD

MARLON BRANDO

ME

MICHAEL GRADE

MRS MERTON

NATALIE

NATIONAL POLICE MEMORIAL

ESTHER RANTZEN

NIGELLA LAWSON

O. J.

OLIVER REED

ORSON WELLES

CALL ME PETE

NIGHTS AT THE COMEDY

DRIVING MR WINNER

PETER USTINOV

POLICE

STEPPING UP TO THE PLATE

A VILLAGE GREEN

MEMORIALS

RACHEL WEISZ

THE ROUX OF ROUX

SPEECH 23C

THE CASE OF THE MISSING EARRINGS

DANCING ON MY FEET

RICHARD LITTLEJOHN

RICKY GERVAIS

ROBERT MITCHUM

ROMAN POLANSKI

STANLEY KUBRICK

STEPHANIE BEACHAM

TOMMY COOPER

FRANKIE HOWERD

KENNETH WILLIAMS

PETER COOK

WON TON TON

KENNY EVERETT

STING AND TRUDIE STYLER

PART II: WINNER’S DINNER REVIEWS

PART III: WINNER’S DINNER AWARDS 2011–2012

RESTAURANTS REVIEWED

Plates

Copyright

FOREWORD

Tales I Never Told! is a rather frightening title! It means that I have to be absolutely certain that every story I’ve put in this book has never been told anywhere, not in the sewers, not in skyscrapers, not on aeroplanes, not in any known or unknown society that exists on any planet. I could not put my hand on my heart and swear that was true because my memory as to what I’ve said where is not totally infallible. I have checked through other books I have written, particularly my autobiography and my last book, Unbelievable!, and as far as I can see, all these stories are absolutely freshly put before the public. If you find one that isn’t, or even two that are not, please keep it to yourself. Do not tell anybody. Do not reveal such an embarrassing matter that could place me in public ridicule; a position I’ve been in for so long it wouldn’t make much difference anyway!

The wonderful thing about stories is that we all tell them every day of our lives. We tell about what Mrs Smith the neighbour did, or what Harry Bloggs our uncle did or what some other idiot did. We relish the details, often rather obscenely, if they are details that show particular distress. There’s always a certain delight in other people’s misfortunes. It can be called “gossip”. It can be called “passing information”. It can be called commenting on life around us.

Life around me has largely been both eventful and full of very famous people. Some people, and I object to them strongly, say that I am a name-dropper. We all drop names. You drop names of the people you know or who your acquaintances know because they are people in your daily life. If I talk about people in my daily life, many of whom happen to be legendary or at least famous, that’s because they’re in my daily life. What am I supposed to do? Not talk about them? Go down the road to find someone I don’t know at all and say, “What is your name?”, have a long conversation and come back and gossip about it? That would be too much to bear – for me and the person that I was talking to.

There are many stories that I have not told, or at least only ever told to a very limited audience of friends, and many of these friends appear in this book. There are also a great many stories I have not told at all and still cannot tell because they are too revelatory about famous people I greatly like and who are alive.

So in a way, this is a book of gossip. Gossip is sometimes used as a word indicating shallowness or an inability to talk about higher and more intellectual matters. This is ridiculous! We all chat about our daily lives. If we wish, we talk about art, life and other intellectual matters. I am going to relieve you from the tedium of hearing me talk about art, life and intellectual matters – although, believe me, I am capable of it. This book is meant as a bit of fun to while away hours that otherwise might be less cheerful.

The second part of the book is a catch-up for you on the last year or so of reviews in the Winner’s Dinners column of the Sunday Times. There are people who say I’m a food critic. That is far too grand a title for what I do. I consider myself a humour writer (that could depend on your sense of humour!) who writes stories about his time in restaurants and other places. I am certainly not a food expert. But having had the good fortune to be born to reasonably well off parents, I ate in the finest restaurants from around the age of five. Eventually, unless you’re a total moron (which I am on occasions), you learn by continual tasting what is good and what is not. I write as an ordinary punter. I go to restaurants. I pay for every meal. If they refuse to give me a bill, I argue and go on a bit and if they still decline, then I give a large tip which I believe to be the equivalent of what I would have paid for the meal. That tip goes in to what is called a tronc, which is divided among all the waiting staff, and possibly cloakroom staff, and others in the restaurant. So I do my bit for humanity!

We also have in this book the Winner’s Dinners Awards for 2011/12. These are unique in the history of awards. They attract the most marvellous people to present them. Last year it was Sir Michael Caine, Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber and Barbara Windsor. The only trouble was I left the awards at home so they couldn’t actually present anything! They just told people what they’d got and later one of my staff rushed back to the house and got the awards and handed them out to those who were there. We got through some twelve awards in fourteen minutes. Probably (in fact definitely), an all-time record for the handing out of awards which is normally done by some boring head of a company at a dinner that goes on forever. The Winner’s Dinners Awards are handed out at a champagne reception at the Belvedere restaurant and some very meaningful people are in the audience; last year we had Sir Tim Rice and Chris Rea, to mention but two.

I have never taken food writing too seriously. I’ve never taken life with total seriousness because it is so ridiculous, what’s the point? But I have enjoyed it, as I hope you will enjoy this book, which reveals episodes in my life.

PART I

TALES I NEVER TOLD!

ARNOLD CRUST

One of my greatest creations, rather like she who rustled up Frankenstein’s monster, is Arnold Crust. When I was working on a column called “In London Last Night” for the Evening Standard in the mid-1950s, we needed someone to make humorous remarks about the hundreds of debutantes, most of whom were not exactly bright. So Jeremy Campbell, the editor, and I invented a girl debutante called Venetia Crust. I also invented a father for her called Arnold. Arnold first appeared in the press at a restaurant owned by Tommy Yeardye who later married Diana Dors. Tommy was an irrepressible businessman, had previously been a stuntman, later became rich as a property dealer and had a considerable stake in the Vidal Sassoon brand. He also put money into the business of Hackney-based Malaysian shoe designer, Jimmy Choo. Tommy’s daughter ran the business and it became an enormous success.

In those days Tommy was grovelling about. He opened a basement restaurant called The Paint Box. The idea was that people would eat and at the same time have an easel and oils and paint naked girls who were littered around the room. I guess I would have been asked to the opening, or some time later. It was there that Arnold Crust was born. He was seriously stated in the Evening Standard (written by me!) to have been present and painted a picture called “Trauma” with a stirrup pump. The 1950s were a very fun time!

I was so thrilled at having invented Arnold Crust that I used him again and again. I edited nearly all my own movies myself, sitting at the machine which in those days ran celluloid through something called a Movieola. I marked the film with a white wax crayon, cut the film myself and stuck it together with Sellotape. That’s how editing was done before digital machines came in. Since I was already credited on most of my movies as producer, director and, frequently, as writer as well, I thought that to also have a single screen credit as editor was a bridge too far. So on most of my movies it says Editor, Arnold Crust. Arnold has had some very good reviews, often better than the film in general. It was many years before Variety, the trade newspaper, wrote that “Edited by Arnold Crust” meant “Edited by Michael Winner”. Later, Arnold Crust blossomed again as a photographer. When I took a picture for my Sunday Times column, the photo credit at the top read “Arnold Crust”. He’s a wonderful fellow, Arnold. I don’t know what happened to his daughter Venetia, but he has stayed in the public eye for years. I’m sure I will find other activities for him to pursue. A man of his talents cannot be kept down.

IN THE OFFICE

My father was a very big collector of paintings, furniture and jade. As you know, none of this came to me because my mother nicked it all and sold it to pay her debts to the Cannes casino. During my father’s foraging through the salesrooms and shops of Mayfair and St James’s he did something which was absolutely brilliant. I was only told about it well after he had died, by an old Jewish bronze dealer in Jermyn Street. He said to me, “You know, your father was famous in this area, St James’s, where all the dealers are. He was famous for the words ‘in the office’.” I said, “What does that mean?”

In those days the dealers would come round to my father’s house with paintings and jade, particularly paintings. They would leave the paintings in his house on approval, the price having been agreed, to see if he liked them. This was quite clever of the dealer because by putting a painting up in a man’s house, the prospective buyer eventually got a proprietary feel for it, and most likely would want to keep it.

They reckoned without my dad! Apparently he would phone the dealer and say, “You know, I’m very fond of that oil painting you left here. I really like it but unfortunately my wife Helen hates it. She won’t have it in the house. So all I can do is put it in the office. And if it goes in the office I can’t pay as much for it as I would if it went in the house.” Thus my father would renegotiate the price for the painting. I’m sure the paintings didn’t all go in his office because it wasn’t very large. If all those paintings had gone in his office he wouldn’t have been able to get in! I think it’s a wonderful gag to pull. The dealers sold the painting, they still made a profit, and dad had a bit left to indulge me. Or buy some more stuff for himself.

CHARLES BRONSON

Charles Bronson contracted Alzheimer’s some six years before he died and was basically out of it. But before that, and after the death of his second wife Jill Ireland, he rang me and said, “I think at last, Michael, I’ve met someone who I want to spend my life with which I never thought I’d do after Jill died.” The person involved was a lady called Kim Weeks who used to be secretary to an agent called Michael Viner. Charlie met her because of me. Michael Viner met Jill when she was visiting on my film The Sentinel in which Viner’s wife Deborah Raffin was playing a leading role. Jill took him on as her book agent and thus Charlie met both him and his secretary Kim Weeks. I think Kim Weeks set her sights on getting Bronson from day one. It was rumoured that she was having an affair with Michael Viner but, either way, she and Charlie started to become an item. I remember Charlie saying to me one New Year when I asked him where he was going on New Year’s Eve, “I shall be Connecticut and I’m having dinner with Kim Weeks. I really feel for her, Michael.” I rang him a few days later and asked, “Have you fixed your New Year venue yet Charlie?” He replied, “No I shall be at home alone.” I said, “I thought you were having dinner with Kim Weeks and some other people?” Charlie said, “No, she deceived me. I didn’t know she was coming out here until a few days before New Year and then I discovered that she had come out a week earlier and was staying with Michael Viner.” So Charlie stopped seeing her. I know he was genuinely very hurt. Later they got together and married, and were together for a considerable time, although I think Kim was not in favour of Charlie being in too close contact with his previous friends or with his children. The children certainly didn’t approve of her and there was some conflict over his will, where she thought she hadn’t been left enough and the children thought she’d been left too much!

The Daily Mail asked me to write an obituary for Jill Ireland before she’d actually died. I said, “I can’t deliver this while she’s alive, it will be too painful.” Jill was an ex-girlfriend of mine who I was madly in love with in the mid-1950s, well before she met Charlie. When she was very ill with cancer, towards the end Jill had a friend with her who was a journalist from Los Angeles. He spent a lot of time in the house. When the Daily Mail rang me and said, “Jill Ireland has just died. Your obituary will miss the first edition but can you get it in speedily?” I had written it but not given it to them. So I sent it in. Then I thought I’d better commiserate with Charlie. So I rang him at his home in Malibu and said, “Charlie, I’m so sorry.” He responded, “What are you sorry about?” I said, “Well, Jill.” He said, “What about Jill?” I explained, “I understand she’s just died, Charlie.” There was an intake of breath and Charlie said, “Jeez how did you know that?” Of course, the journalist had put it on the wire services and Charlie wasn’t aware of how speedily news travelled at that time. When he said, “What about Jill?” I was terrified. I thought maybe she hadn’t died and I was calling him up on a piece of untrue information. But sadly it was true.

THE MECHANIC

Charlie Bronson always believed that people were slighting him or cheating him. From an accusation that my assistant, Stephen, was watering down his Yuban instant coffee to endless querying of hotel bills and arguing whether or not he made a phone call on that particular night, he always thought he was being cheated. We were filming The Mechanic on the coast road between Amalfi and Positano. There was a tunnel through the road which we’d had closed. Charlie came out of the tunnel, sat next to me and said, “I’m going to kill that bastard.” I said, “Who are you going to kill Charlie and why?” He said, “That arsehole Italian electrician keeps bumping into me.” So saying, he got up to go back into the tunnel and sort him out. I’m sure the electrician was not bumping into him deliberately. I said, “Charlie, come back. Let’s not have a fight. We’re surrounded by an Italian crew of sixty people. I think they outnumber us. So it’s best to keep quiet.” The next thing I knew there were screams and shouts coming from the tunnel. For some reason, the Italian crew were having a bar room brawl. They were hitting each other, smashing each other about. The Italian assistant director went in and becalmed them. When I next saw the Italians, they were coming out of the tunnel, some of them bleeding, and were slapping each other on the back and shaking hands like they were blood brothers. Well they were but it was real blood.

On the same movie, we had major car chases along the coast road. One Saturday, the head of United Artists, David Picker, came down to see me with his wife. So we used the day, which was normally a day off, for the second unit to do shots with cars screeching round corners, and stick the camera out the window and photograph the wheels of the car as it drove at speed; all that sort of thing. Picker and I were in a car going along the Amalfi road to lunch at the San Pietro Hotel right on the top of a rock overlooking the Mediterranean. As we drove along we saw a car crunched to pieces which had hit the wall of the coast road. Rather forlorn-looking technicians were standing around it scratching their heads. David Picker said to me, “I hope that’s not one of ours.” I said, “Yes, David, it is. I’ll deal with it after lunch.” We had four identical cars in the same state. On that afternoon the second unit crashed two of them. So we desperately had to find another Fiat that looked the same. But it wasn’t wasn’t quite the same. The interior leather was a different colour and even the car itself was a slightly different colour. Nobody noticed it on the screen. It’s just the sort of thing that happens on action movies. Bit of a giggle really.

BURT LANCASTER

After his death Burt Lancaster was often written about as being someone who swung both ways. That is, with both men and women. In the leading biography of him after he died the writer claimed that he had been at a party with 167 US marines and Rock Hudson. I could imagine Burt phoning me and saying, “Did you see what that cocksucker wrote? She said there were 167 US marines at the party. There were 171.”

DINING STARS

The first TV series that bore my name was called Michael Winner’s True Crimes. It appeared between 1991 and 1994 on London Weekend Television. It was a phenomenal success. Running at 10–10.30 p.m., it attracted viewing figures that ranged between twelve million and seven million. Admittedly those were different days but the figures, even in those times, were phenomenal. True Crimes told the story of how the police go out on a major investigation and end up catching the criminal. The sentence and the trial were also part of it. The series was directed by one of the most successful producers in television today, a lovely man called Jeff Pope. It was produced by Simon Shaps, who went on to become Director of Programmes for ITV. It was taken off air because my so-called friend, Michael Grade (who’d do anything to get into the newspapers) gave a speech at the end of the Edinburgh Television Festival in which he suddenly turned on me and said, “Michael Winner’s True Crimes was just the sort of exploitative television which should not be on the air.” There was nothing remotely exploitative about the show. Maybe it was because his channel, Channel 4, didn’t have anything like it. In those days, the programmes were chosen by a cabal of people, meeting in a room, who decided what would go where. They were all terrified of Michael Grade. Therefore, not wishing to cross him, they ditched my programme. Considering Michael Grade and I used to lunch regularly and were supposedly friends, this seemed to me an act of treachery, which is not untypical of Michael Grade’s behaviour.

It was not until early 2010 that I was given a new series called Michael Winner’s Dining Stars. This came about because one of the great television executives of our day, Jimmy Mulville, approached me and said they had this show where I would go round to people’s houses and comment on their cooking. A pilot programme was made by a partnership of Jimmy and another company called 12 Yard. The show was to be transmitted in the afternoon.

When the pilot was seen by Peter Fincham, Director of Television for the ITV network, things took a turn! Mr Fincham was so delighted with the pilot he decided to give it a peak time evening slot. This was to be 9–10 p.m. on Tuesdays. Four programmes were made as a kind of test run. Everyone at ITV was marvellous. In fact, they were so marvellous and so enthusiastic they probably killed the show with kindness!

I remember sitting in my cinema with Peter Fincham and ITV’s Head of Factual Programming, Alison Sharman. I said, “What we need on this show is a producer. At the moment, it’s like those games we used to play when we were kids, where someone comes over with a tray with a number of objects on it and we kind of linked them together and made a story.” To which Peter Fincham said, “You’ve got Jimmy Mulville who is one of the greatest producers of all time!” I replied, “That’s quite true Peter, Jimmy is one of the greatest producers of all time. But we never see him. He never phones, he never writes. We’ve got some man who produced a programme about people on a bus and while he is a very nice human being, I really don’t think he’s up to it.” But nobody took any notice of me – we went ahead and made the programmes.

The critics were somewhat divided. The popular press wasn’t crazy about it but others were. Charlie Brooker in The Guardian said: “It’s the sort of programme that simultaneously makes you feel glad and aghast to be alive. Winner himself plays to the cameras with more knowing skill than anyone in any of his own films has ever managed. It’s all put on for the cameras of course but somehow this in itself it fascinating. In the end, I simply admitted defeat and started laughing at him and with him. The show elevates from mere schedule-filler to amusing cultural artefact.” Boyd Hilton, the TV Critic of Heat magazine, said: “I couldn’t tear myself away from it, it was brilliant TV. It’s fantastic. Michael Winner can be on every night as far as I’m concerned.” Matthew Norman in The Independent said: “It’s cracking television. A riot of more mirth and buoyancy.” I could go on. But you might think I was being conceited!

Before we got to these reviews the show had to be made. Somewhere along the line, the word had filtered down from Peter Fincham that I had to be very menacing. The reason my column in the Sunday Times has run for over sixteen years and is so popular is that I take the piss out of myself. I realised very early on that menacing was not altogether sympathetic. But I went along with it. Many of the critics noticed I was playing the pantomime villain. Some did not. Perhaps the public took me more seriously than I should have been taken.

There were also some rather strange happenings. Quite early on, I made some silly comments about the north of England. I said I loved the people, I loved the scenery but that the food was dreadful and that the ladies didn’t know how to dress. It was later that I learned that ITV’s main audience is northern women. I ask myself now, why didn’t someone say to me, “You can’t really say that Michael, because our audience is northern women.” We were not making Hamlet. I would have been happy to redo that bit. The comments were made in my house and since they were shooting in my house nearly every week it would have been very easy to change. It’s so easy to look back in retrospect at what could and should have happened. Doesn’t help really!

It was a wonderful romp going round people houses; I liked them greatly. Although some of the press suggested I was a great bully, I stayed friends with all of the contestants. They were all invited to my house to dinner and I still speak to them regularly.

I’d been working with, and employing, technicians in film and television for well over fifty years before the advent of Dining Stars. What happened on this programme was beyond human belief. I have never seen anything like it! We had a youngish director, Nic Guttridge, and an executive producer, Matt Walton, who thought he was God’s gift to the world. They were amusing and I liked them. Very near the beginning of the series I realised the trouble I was in. I was going on a private jet (which I was paying for) to Italy. The crew would meet me there later to do some shooting at a hotel on Lake Garda. First of all, I checked the weather. The day they were due to film in Lake Garda, which was four days after they shot me getting on the plane, the forecast showed total and continuous rain. Neither the executive producer nor the director had bothered to check, which is something every professional should do if they are shooting outdoors. I said to them, “Have you checked the weather forecast?” They replied, “No.” I said, “Well I suggest you come tomorrow when the forecast is good. There’s only three of you coming anyway. Why wait until it’s raining and misty and you can’t even see the other side of the lake or much else.” So they did come earlier. If they’d come on the day they’d chosen it would have rained nonstop. I was there and saw nonstop rain and low cloud.

What was particularly bizarre was that I came in my Rolls-Royce Phantom to the plane for the journey and I said, “My fiancée Geraldine and I will get out and walk to the plane,” whereupon the director replied, “No, Geraldine can’t walk onto the plane. We only want you. We don’t want Geraldine.” I said, “Just a minute she’s coming on holiday with me. You’re going to be showing her in these luxurious places with me. How do you suggest she got there? Did she hitch hike? Did she swim and then take a train? Of course, she should walk onto the plane with me. If you want to interview me afterwards about what is going to happen that can be done without her.” This blew into a major incident. Finally I said, “Look I’m paying for the plane, which ITV could not afford and would not wish to, and I don’t blame them. If I’m paying for the plane, I’ve got news for you: Geraldine and I are going to walk from the car to the plane.” This is what happened. Whereupon the executive producer, Matt Walton, sent me an email in which he threatened to quit unless he had total control and that did not include me saying who walks from car to the aeroplane. When we got to Lake Garda the director said, “Can I see you?” We went out on to the balcony of my suite and he asked, “Who’s running this show?” I said, “Well it’s quite clear you are, Nic. We’ve been filming all day and I’ve done absolutely everything you told me to. The business with the aeroplane was just ridiculous. So shut up and let’s get on with life.” Then the executive producer came out and announced he wanted to have a private conversation with me. I said, “No, I don’t wish to talk about this. It’s all over.” Thus we continued.

I could list some quite extraordinary ineptitude in the organisation of the show but that doesn’t help matters. It did produce for me the most extraordinary day I’ve ever had in the fifty-five years I’ve been in show business. Normally, the director leaves a TV series the second shooting is over. But thinking he would be helpful, I insisted that Nic Guttridge stayed on through the editing. This cost the show quite a bit of extra money. ITV was very kind and helpful and agreed to it. The editing period is normally supervised by the executive producer and the associate producer only. I was shown the intended cut of each episode and asked to make my comments. The third episode was, I thought, appallingly edited. It was slack. It left out incidents that were very funny. It was generally a mess. So I sought permission from ITV to go in myself and re-edit it. I had, after all, edited over thirty major feature pictures myself. I had not delegated that to an editor. I ran the celluloid through my hands on the Movieola, made the marks, cut it and pasted it together and thus made a movie. Today, of course, it’s not done that way. It is done on the computer. I am not a world expert on computers. In fact, if there is anyone more stupid on computers than me, I’m yet to meet him. So I brought the editor of my commercials with me. We arranged to go into the cutting room and re-edit episode three!

The first thing was that none of the editors would give my editor any help at all. Probably instructed by the executive producer and director. They were totally belligerent. So we had dozens of tracks with things going on and none of the editors even showed up. They declined to be of any use at all. That is a disgrace. Regardless, we soldiered on and I re-edited episode three with my TV commercial editor and was very happy with it. At this point the director, Nic, said, “Well I’ve done a re-edit of episode three. I’d like you to see it.” I replied, “I don’t want to see it. I’ve done one already, I’m very happy with it and it will now be shown to ITV. If they like it, as far as I’m concerned that’s the end of the matter. If ITV want to see your version, that’s up to them.”

There was then the most extraordinary meeting I have ever encountered in my life in show business. Into the cutting room came Alison Sharman, the excellent boss of Factual Programming at ITV; Jimmy Mulville, one of the most serious and respected producers in the history of television; and Alison Sharman’s assistant, Jo Clinton-Davis, an extremely intelligent woman. They looked at my episode three and decided that was it. They far preferred it to the one that had been made originally by the editor and director. ITV put, as it were, the Good Housekeeping seal on my version. At this point, the director and executive producer started to argue. They said, “But you’ve got to see our version.” The ITV people replied, “No, we don’t want to. We’ve accepted Michael’s. That’s it.”

As far as I’m concerned, if senior representatives of the company that is paying everybody’s salary and is putting up the money for the programme says, “That’s it” then that is it! It is not a subject for debate. But these two, Nic and Matt, went on and on and on. It was quite the most pathetic performance I’ve ever seen. Finally I said, “Look, the top brass at ITV plus one of the greatest producers in the world of television is here and they’ve all said they would like to use my episode three. That is the end of the matter. These are not people you have to debate with. They’ve got their positions through having great skill and integrity. They are your boss and mine and they’ve spoken.” At which point, when one of the ITV executives said, “Michael Winner is right, we’re taking his version”. The director, Nic, stood up, glared at everybody, went to the door, opened it, walked out and slammed the door with an enormous bang. Now if that is not unprofessional behaviour, then I do not know what is. If I’d behaved like that on my feature movies I’d have been fired from every one of them, and rightly so.

At that point, you might think the matter was over. But the minute the top brass left, I was literally waylaid in the corridor by Guttridge and Walton, insisting that I went and saw their version of episode three, assuring me that I had to see it and that they were not happy. Which did not interest me at all. The moaning and groaning went on for a very long time but ITV stood firm. Anyway, these people were employees. Anybody on a show who is not the owner or the boss is an employee. Even when I was directing the most important movies with major international stars I was an employee. If the head of the studio said he wanted this or that, you could have a brief discussion and then you’d better jolly well do it. Except the movie executives I worked for were highly intelligent and I never really had any trouble with them at all.

The show duly went out. By now everyone at ITV was so enthusiastic about it they not only moved it from the afternoon to 9 p.m. on a Tuesday, they decided they would put it on at the same time on a Friday to try and break the BBC’s grip on Friday night and start the weekend early. I was doing the Piers Morgan show and was chatting with Piers about this. Piers said, “You’re in trouble, Michael, 9–10 p.m. on Friday is the graveyard shift.” Boy was he right!

Another thing about television is that it’s not just how good you are but what are you up against on the other channels. If you’re up against something really strong that has scooped up a lot of viewers, who might otherwise be floating about, you’re not going to do as well.

Our first episode came out against the climax of a highly popular BBC series called Five. This was a thriller series and the final show of the series was going to be the denouement, telling who did what, and what it was all about. So while we got a respectable figure of around 2.5 million viewers, it was not enough. The second episode went out competing against the Wales v England rugby match. As fate would have it, England did very well and that got an enormous audience on BBC1. The third episode went out against the Eurovision song contest heats, which also got an impressive audience. Our fourth episode was screened at the same time as Sports Aid, which simply wiped everything out. So although our figures were more or less the same as other programmes achieved for a very long time in that slot, until Paul O’Grady took over, they were not enough for the series to be recommissioned. A large number of viewers were watching these big show rivals and there were not enough floating about as it were, some of whom would have settled on us to boost our ratings.

Unfortunately, and I quite understand their position and am sympathetic to it, ITV does not nurture shows. As one of their top executives said to me, “If this had been on Channel 4 or BBC2 they would have stuck with it and you’d have built up a big audience.” I also believe, if it had been aired on Tuesday from 9 p.m. until 10 p.m., which is a much quieter time, it would probably have done very well. In the afternoon it would have been a sensation! None of that matters. I could be right, I could be wrong. This is showbiz. You have highs and lows, joys and disappointments. This was not so disappointing that I threw myself from the basement window. I left with great respect and liking for the people at ITV.

The whole thing reminded me of the time in my movie career when I made a film called The Nightcomers with Marlon Brando. It was a period film. Marlon was by no means at his peak, to put it mildly. In fact, he’d been in eleven flops in a row. The film was bought by the legendary US movie executive, Joseph E. Levine. The Godfather was due to come out six months later. I said, “Joe don’t put my film out now. It’s a Victorian film; it won’t date. The Godfather will be a smash and you’ll have one of the biggest stars in the world in your film instead of having someone who is not, although a great actor, in a good period.” But Joe Levine was so crazy about the film and thought it was so wonderful, he took the view we could break through and do well anyway. The result is The Nightcomers did make a profit, and I still get profit cheques from it, but it was a very small profit! If we’d gone out after The Godfather it would have been an enormous profit.

That, as the saying goes, is life. I’ve had great successes. Some things have not always gone exactly as I would have liked them to. I bet that’s the same in your life. Not perfect every day, is it?

A CAINE JOKE

Here’s a Michael Caine joke, one that he tells. He does it very well because he gets the accents so perfectly. This is the joke anyway: An American, visiting Ireland where he was born, meets up with an Irish farmer. The American says, “How much land have you got?” The farmer says, “Well you see that distant tree on the left there? That’s the end of my land there. Then you go to the right, you see that hill? That’s where my land ends. And then it comes back towards the house by that river. It’s a lot of land.” The American says, “That’s nothing. I’ve got so much land in Texas it takes me five hours to drive around it.” “I had a car like that once,” says the Irishman.

FAYE DUNAWAY

Faye Dunaway gave me one of my most embarrassing moments ever. She invited me to dinner with a number of people at the Cipriani restaurant in London. Before I went I asked her not to put me next to a certain lady. When we came to the table I was sitting on Faye’s left and some Arab prince was on her right. The lady I did not wish to be sat next to was way down the table. As the meal progressed, Faye looked up and said to this lady, “You know Michael Winner particularly asked not to be sat next to you because he said you were boring.” The lady went ash white, as one might expect. Somehow or other the meal carried on. The next day Faye rang me to ask me how the dinner had gone. “I don’t know how it went for you, Faye,” I said, “but for me it was a bloody nightmare. I asked not to be sat next to so-and-so but I didn’t expect you to announce to them personally, in front of everyone else, that I didn’t want to sit next to them because they were a bore.” “Oh,” said Faye, “I never thought of that. I do hope it didn’t worry you.” I said, “Worry me? Faye, I nearly threw myself out the basement window when I got home.”

Although Faye was absolutely no trouble with me, in spite of my having been warned she was absolutely impossible, she was trouble to our brilliant lighting and cameraman Jack Cardiff. Jack, who has had all sorts of major awards, was going through a thin time. He was working on films in those days for something called the Children’s Film Foundation which made films for children to be shown in the afternoon. So when I brought him on to The Wicked Lady it was a comeback for him in big feature movies. Unfortunately, Faye had a different idea of lighting to Jack. She would say to Dougie, the chief electrician: “Dougie take that 2-K light and move it there, point it right into my eyes.” She’d proceed to relight the entire scene which Jack had so carefully laid out brilliantly. There’s nothing you can do when something like that happens, because the star is the star and they’re going to do what they want. Furthermore, I didn’t really think, in spite of changing the texture of the scene to a degree, that it was doing any great harm. Jack Cardiff, of course, was absolutely furious. He said to me, “Michael, this is impossible, if Faye Dunaway keeps talking to my chief electrician and changing the lighting I’m going to quit.” I said, “Jack, if you’re going to quit I can’t stop you. You can quit. But we’re working close to London. Another cameraman will be here in half an hour. You’ve been cameraman on films for the Children’s Film Foundation. This is not exactly a glorious end to your career. I’m bringing you back in to feature movies. I suggest you bite the bullet, shut up and get on with it.” Which is exactly what Jack did. When Time magazine reviewed the film they said something to the effect that Faye’s eyes were so lit and gleaming that she looked like Darth Vader. But it was still a beautifully lit film. Jack got much praise for it and deservedly so.

SIDEWATER SAID

I’m always amused by one-liners that people come out with. The very famous Italian, turned American, film producer Dino De Laurentiis for whom I made Death Wish, and other movies, married the assistant accountant on his movie Amityville II: The Possession after his famous film actress wife Silvana Mangano died. He used to go around saying, “Who would have thought I’d marry a girl from Ohio.” His ex-assistant, Fred Sidewater, who had a barbed wit said, “From Ohio via Bulgari.”

GLYNIS BARBER

Glynis Barber was a young actress who I chose to play the second lead in The Wicked Lady with Faye Dunaway, Alan Bates and John Gielgud. She had just done a series called Jane on television where she played a pin-up cartoon character that used to be in the Daily Mirror, mostly in high heels, sexy underwear and little else. She was a good-looking girl and I thought I would make her a star. She came to see me with her agent and I said, “Glynis, in between everything else I’m doing, I’ve decided I’m going to make you a big star. We’ll get you a lot of publicity.” Glynis replied, “I don’t want anybody to know my age.” I said, “Everybody knows your age, Glynis, it was just in the paper for you having been in Jane.” She said, “Yes but you’re not to tell anyone my age. You’re absolutely not.” I thought, “What am I bothering with this for?” I said, “OK Glynis, I withdraw the offer to make you a star. I’ll have a cup of tea instead.” People say to me stars are known to be difficult but Glynis Barber was impossible. If ever there was a costume and wig change where she and Faye Dunaway left the set and had to return with a new outfit and a new wig, Faye was always back considerably earlier than Glynis. So the whole unit waited for Glynis Barber. John Gielgud waited. Alan Bates waited. Faye Dunaway waited. I waited. Absolutely bloody ridiculous! She’s one of the very few really difficult actresses I’ve ever come across.

There was nudity in The Wicked Lady too, which Glynis Barber absolutely refused to do. But she signed permission for us to get a body double. So we got a body double who was so good and the scenes were cut so well that everyone thought Glynis had these sizeable bosoms even though in real life she’s a bit lacking there. She was naked in a sex scene with Oliver Tobias. Glynis was concerned when the film came out that people thought it wasn’t her in the nude. So she employed a publicist to try and get this information about. Considering that Vanessa Redgrave, Glenda Jackson, Jane Fonda and practically every female artist in the business had flashed their bosoms when necessary, I really thought that was all too ridiculous for words.

TIME THING

I delight in absolute silliness. I was sitting in The Wolseley with my lovely fiancée Geraldine Lynton-Edwards and she said, “What’s the time?” I looked at my watch and said,“9.30.” She said, “Time for your baff” and slapped me on the cheek. This is a game she plays. So now we try and trick each other into “What’s the time” and “Time for your baff”. We were laughing so hysterically at this (which shows our state of mind!) that a nice gay couple a few seats away started crying with laughter too. Try it. Say to your friend, fiancée, girlfriend, male, female, “What’s the time?” and when they tell you say, “Time for your baff” and give a pat on the cheek, not heavily of course. They or may not find it amusing. But every little bit helps. Or possibly hinders.

RICHARD HARRIS

Elizabeth Rees-Williams was nineteen when she married the actor Richard Harris. She went on to marry another famous actor, Rex Harrison. Everybody said she did that because with two husbands with the initials RH it meant she didn’t have to change the embossed towels or bed linen. She later married Jonathan Aitken, the MP who went to prison and came out a born again Christian. When she was with Richard Harris she lived with him next door to me. Richard, like all heavy drinkers, was absolutely marvellous when he wasn’t drunk but a bit of a pain when he was. He had a very famous tailor called Douglas Hayward, the man they said Alfie was fashioned upon. Hayward at one point, when he was starting, used to visit people at home. If Richard was drunk he’d lock him in the house and it took him hours to get out! My mother adored Richard Harris. He was very polite to her, she was a real lady. To her he was the perfect neighbour.

I once went to the theatre to see Richard in a play. As I was entering the theatre, everyone else was coming out. I thought, “This is odd the play hasn’t begun yet.” What had happened was that another actor had slammed a chair onto Richard’s foot in the matinée and he couldn’t go on for the evening show. I went backstage where he was in considerable pain. We adjourned to the Savoy Hotel where Richard was staying, and a Jewish doctor turned up to examine him. I thought, “Richard’s in trouble here.” I’d known that particular person since his youth and he’d failed the medical exam twice. He also once came out with a great line to me. I was ill and he came to see me, and I must have said something to which his response was, “I’m not here for the good of your health.” Meaning he wanted money. I thought that for a doctor to say he wasn’t there for the good of his patient’s health was a fairly droll remark!

LA RÉSERVE DE BEAULIEU

I was at the hotel La Réserve de Beaulieu in the South of France last year. It has a small jetty where people can come in by motorboat and then go into the hotel for lunch. There was the most horrific noise. A boat which sounded as if its exhaust had blown was going to and fro trying to moor, and it took forever. Everyone was extremely annoyed at the terrible noise, which shattered the peace of this lovely view of the Mediterranean, and the rocks, and all the other stuff that’s around there. Then the boat stopped and two burly men tried to help off a man who appeared to be considerably crippled. The boat kept moving in order to get a securer position, with accompanying cacophony. Eventually it gave up and went away. About half an hour later, the man from the boat was having lunch alone on the balcony above the pool area. My lovely fiancée Geraldine has a son, a French actor called Fabrice, who said to me, “That man sitting there is Larry Flynt. Flynt, of course, is the famous American publisher of pornography and semi-pornography who was shot and crippled by a white supremacist in Georgia who was outraged that a photo in Flynt’s magazine Hustle showed a black and a white girl together.

I thought: “How can Fabrice know?” I said, “I don’t think it is Larry Flynt.” That was the end of the matter. In fact it was Larry Flynt. He sat on the balcony for a very long time on his own. I could have had an incredible conversation with him. His career was absolutely historic. He was also the subject of an important movie biography called The People vs Larry Flynt in 2005 in which he was played by Woody Harrelson. That was a conversation that I deeply regret having missed!

At the same hotel I missed another conversation the year before with Al Pacino. I would have liked to have had that, because when we were making Firepower in New York with Sophia Loren, the casting director Cis Corman, who then became Barbra Streisand’s partner in her production company, said to me, “Al Pacino would love to meet Sophia Loren, is that possible?” I said, “Of course he can.” So we fixed up for Al Pacino to come on the set when we were filming in New York. Cis Corman advised me, “Whatever you do, don’t call him Al or Pacino, he wants to be known as Robert Jones.”

Evening came and the scene was being lit and I could see in the distance through the cables and the crew a limousine turning up. Out of this limousine got Al Pacino. As he walked through the New York crew they were all shouting out things like, “Hi Al”, “How are you Al?”, “Haven’t seen you for a while, Al”, “Great to see you Al.” Eventually, Pacino got to me and Cis Corman said, “This is Robert Jones.” I said, “Very nice to meet you Mr Jones. I’ll just go and check if Sophia Loren is free.” I went into Sophia’s caravan, came back and said, “Yes Mr Jones, Sophia will see you now.” Al Pacino duly went in to Sophia Loren. When he came out, he thanked me and I said, “Goodbye Mr Jones” and he walked off through the New York crew and who called out, “See ya Bobby! Good to have seen you kid”, and all that sort of thing. Al got back into his car. I considered that an absolutely Kafkaesque moment. Here was I calling him Robert Jones and everyone else was calling him Al because they knew him well.

Years later I’m sitting in same hotel La Réserve de Beaulieu. A few tables away from me is a tall person who keeps looking at me, a very beautiful African American lady and a rather scruffy looking man. When they left I said to the restaurant manager, “Who was that group?” “Oh, that was Bono with Al Pacino and his girlfriend”, he replied. Another opportunity missed. I’d love to have gone over and said, “How are you Mr Jones? Long time no see.”

MARGARET LOCKWOOD

Margaret Lockwood was one of the great British movie stars of the 1930s and 1940s and went on acting for many years thereafter. She was famous for her beauty, her dark hair and a beauty spot she had on her face, which she never had removed.

I was brought up on Margaret Lockwood. She was one of my screen heroines. Who can forget her in movies such as Alfred Hitchcock’s classic The Lady Vanishes?

By the time I made The Wicked Lady with Faye Dunaway in 1982, Margaret Lockwood had become a recluse. She suffered from agoraphobia and never left her house in Richmond. She had played the original lead role in The Wicked Lady, as the highwayman Lady Skelton, with James Mason in 1945. I thought it would be fantastic publicity to get her to come to the movie’s premiere at the Leicester Square theatre along with Faye Dunaway. Margaret’s agent gave me her private number but assured me she would not go to a premiere. She would not leave the house and that was it.

I started phoning Margaret and we became great telephone pals. She clearly and emphatically agreed to come to the premiere. Before this I arranged to have dinner with her at my house on the night the Oscars ceremony was on television. I sent a car for Margaret, who gave me very detailed directions as to how to get from her house to mine. She turned up looking very much like the Margaret Lockwood I knew and loved from the cinema in the 1940s. She wore a headscarf. Her face looked identical and the beauty spot was still there. She arrived on time. We had a very nice dinner and then we settled down to watch the Oscars. It was like watching them with an old time movie star who was utterly disillusioned and bitter about everybody and about the fact that stardom had passed her by. She made caustic remarks about everybody who got an Oscar or was nominated, or just happened to be in the audience! It was great fun, but boy was she bitchy! Then she went home.

The next day I said to her agent, Mrs De Leon, that Margaret Lockwood had been with me to dinner the night before. Mrs De Leon said, “I don’t believe it.” I said, “What do you mean you don’t believe it?” She said, “She has never left the house for years. She will not leave the house.” I said, “I assure you Margaret Lockwood was sitting in my living room. I have a Polaroid picture of her sitting there last night.”

As the premiere came closer, Margaret suddenly no longer took my phone calls. I just could not get through to her. They were building a stage at the Leicester Square theatre for her and Faye Dunaway to stand on. We’d announced to the press that she would be there. But the lady had vanished! I realised that what Mrs De Leon had told me was true. The fact that I got her to my house for dinner was a miracle and she wasn’t coming out again! In desperation, on a rainy weekend, I bought a very large bunch of flowers and some chocolates and drove to Margaret’s house. She had told me she never left the house and that her neighbour used to do the shopping for her. I arrived at the house in the rain and rang the bell and knocked on the door. I knew Margaret was there. But there was no sign of her and no sign of her answering the door. I felt rather like that scene at the end of The Heiress where the suitor comes to the door and knocks but the father has prevented the girl from seeing him. So the door was not answered. Margaret’s door was not answered to me. The rain ceased a bit and the lady next door came out into her garden; I assumed this was the neighbour