What Fresh Lunacy is This?

by Robert Sellers

  Considering that Ollie was to become a millionaire, it’s fun to reflect on the pay he got in training, according to Rea a measly twenty-eight bob (£1.40) a week maximum, but with deductions for haircuts and barrack damages it could be as low as £1. With trainees getting up at around 5.30 a.m. and cleaning kit in the evenings, this amounted to a wage of one or two pence per hour. Because of the abysmal pay, and as most trainees smoked, there wasn’t much cash left over to get seriously drunk. ‘The NAAFI sold soft drinks and canned beer at around 5p a pint and fags at around 4p for twenty,’ remembers Rea. ‘As far as I knew, local pubs were not out of bounds, but I don’t know of many trainees leaving camp during these first weeks, with all the cleaning, inspections, and guard duties. Also we had to send all civvy clothes home and trainees wore coloured shoulder flashes denoting “just started”. So the pubs were left to the instructors. I only recall Ollie having soft drinks but he was a pretty heavy smoker and he did cadge fags; maybe he didn’t get any money from home.’ Everyone knew of Oliver’s theatrical background, though, and his connection to Sir Carol Reed, and, says Rea, ‘since most of the trainees were working-class this put his standing up considerably.’

  Barracks entertainment was not seen as a high priority but Rea does recall the odd show being put on and, most significantly, Ollie’s participation in them. ‘He performed comedy monologues incorporating a bit of leg-pulling of the trainers and officers using various pronounced funny accents. He also did some general comedy observations of the camp. It was a good display of his acting skills.’ As was his general larking about. Because of the proximity of their surnames Oliver and Rea always stood next to each other in the pay queue and Ollie never failed to act the clown with his over-the-top marching and saluting, which once almost had the pay table over when he slipped and skidded in his hobnailed boots.

  There was also the odd dance, but no woman from the local populace dared go near the drill hall, so army nurses volunteered. At one such dance Ollie flirted with a seemingly obliging lass, unaware she was the sergeant major’s bit on the side. From that day forward he set out to make Ollie’s life a bloody misery, marching him up and down ad nauseam and handing out every shitty job going. Far from downtrodden, Ollie surprised himself by how much he revelled in it all, the atmosphere of bullying that pervades the army, the orders that are never spoken but barked at your lughole, the personal insults, the physical toil. He couldn’t get enough of it all, he was in his element.

  After basic training Oliver was singled out as potential officer material for no other reason than that he had a posh voice. Exactly the same thing had happened to David. ‘Like me, Oliver spoke quite well and sounded educated, we had the veneer of good breeding, which our father had invested in, so they put him up for a commission.’ Off Ollie had gone for a week of tests, and was doing well: the assault course was a piece of cake and he seemed naturally to fit in among the other well-mannered ‘fine fellows’ and ‘good chaps’. Then disaster: each candidate was required to write an essay on ‘The Role of the Modern Army’. Oliver had no problem formulating a thesis but, committed to paper, it looked like the work of a twelve-year-old. The examiners were left scratching their heads and sent him to see the command psychiatrist, ‘simply,’ reveals David, ‘because they couldn’t understand how this young man who to all intents and purposes appeared to be very well educated and different from everyone else didn’t come up to the standard required and wasn’t able to become a young officer.’

  Hurled unceremoniously back into the private ranks, Ollie decided to put himself up for the position of squad instructor. Besides a pay increase to £2 a week and a private room, Ollie was simply born for the position. ‘I could sound as terrifying and inhuman as any Sergeant Major.’ After completing a training course he was made a lance corporal and given his own squad of men to bully and scream at. ‘I became as big a bastard as anybody who had the job of making life miserable for a body of men.’ It’s little wonder that Oliver became so accomplished at playing soldiers on screen, especially in the little-seen The Triple Echo, where his army sergeant is so frighteningly realistic that those who suffered National Service must have broken out in a cold sweat watching it.

  Ollie did his job at the barracks so well that not only was he made up to a full corporal but his unit won everything in sight, and yet his men came to despise him utterly. Taking this to heart, Ollie hoped to make amends by arranging to buy them all a drink one night to celebrate their achievements; not one of them showed up. ‘They refused to forgive me for doing my job properly.’ Fuck them, he thought, and drank in the NAAFI on his own. There was another side to Ollie, though. He had noticed that one of the new recruits struggled with drill and had been in trouble a few times for getting it wrong. Ollie made it his personal crusade to teach the kid to get it right, all in his own spare time. The young soldier never forgot him for it.

  After spending several months as an instructor at Church Crookham, Oliver was posted to the 18th Field Ambulance in Hong Kong. The long voyage on the troopship HMS Oxfordshire was made more arduous by the blockade of the Suez Canal, which necessitated a slight detour round the Cape of Good Hope. One of Oliver’s duties in the ambulance unit was inspecting the private parts of his colleagues for nasty sexual diseases, rife in the area, and what he found under the microscope made him never want to visit any of the local brothels. During a particularly virulent epidemic of crabs, Ollie was asked to unmask the culprit. ‘I found out who it was and I said, “Listen, you little cunt, get down to the medical centre right now, shave off the hair on your bollocks and pour diesel fuel all over your nuts.” And he did, the stupid bugger.’

  Ollie had arrived in the Hong Kong Territories just four years after the end of the Korean War and tension was still high, with British bases strategically placed to resist any encroachment by Communist Chinese forces. Although just how Ollie and a few other stringbean recruits were supposed to hold back hundreds of tanks and thousands of troops hadn’t exactly been explained to them by Whitehall. Even so, the façade of colonial strength was reassuring. The 18th Field Ambulance, based in Taipo village, was a few miles from the Chinese border and occupied several cramped Nissen huts and unappealing camouflage tents. Everyone in the unit received anti-malarials each morning. Ollie’s mate Reg Rea was posted there briefly, before moving to a hospital in Kowloon, and remembers, ‘Ollie was the depot Red Cap or security bouncer.’ He can also still vividly recall the sounds, smells and sights of those incredible days and the appalling conditions many had to live and work in. ‘Hong Kong was generally very nice and not too hot, but we had occasional typhoons, including a serious one called Typhoon Gloria which blew a destroyer aground and caused all sorts of damage at the hospital. There were cockroaches and ants but the city areas were OK. There was overcrowding and squalor in the poorer areas and up in the New Territories poor sanitation and water supply (sometimes available only for a few hours) and sewage spread on paddy fields.’

  Rea didn’t see Ollie again until a chance encounter outside a pub in Wimbledon in 1963. ‘He hadn’t as yet achieved fame but he was clearly more pub-based and had lots of acquaintances and was treating customers to drinks. I did find that strange because in basic training he didn’t drink at all.’ A couple of years later, when Ollie had established himself as a film star, Rea wrote to him and got a genuinely warm and cheerful letter back. ‘I remember you well,’ replied Ollie. ‘In fact I often think about the lads in the army. It’s just sweet to hear from you.’ Responding to a query from Rea about whether he would ever consider rejoining the army, Ollie wrote: ‘No I wouldn’t choose to go back in. But I miss the laughs, don’t you?’

  Ollie breathed a sigh of relief when, after just a short stay in Taipo, the 18th Field Ambulance moved to an RAF base in Sek Kong which offered vastly superior facilities. But it was still in the middle of bloody nowhere and could only be reached by a single, winding road. There wasn’t much to do in the place either, certainly women were in short supply,
and Ollie referred to himself as your typical Virgin Soldier. ‘To pull at a girl’s knicker elastic was the peak of my excitement.’ To alleviate his sexual frustrations he played sports, winning several army trophies for running. He also learned to play rugby, which remained a lifelong passion, and did some more boxing. ‘If you were on the boxing team, you didn’t have to go and work in the cookhouse peeling potatoes. It was an easy life if you were an athlete.’

  As for seeing any action, the closest Ollie came to danger was in Hong Kong when he and a bunch of mates hired a boat in Victoria Harbour and by a combination of bad luck and idiocy managed to row themselves out into open sea. Choppy waters made it impossible to row back, so there they were floating ever closer into Communist territory. Rescue looked likely when a junk pulled alongside, but when they were recognized as British the sailors threw them back like cast-off tuna, with, ‘Fuck off, pommie!’ By this time it was night and pitch-dark. Luckily a breeze picked up and they were slowly pushed back in the direction of the harbour, arriving at dawn exhausted but relieved. Ollie also bragged to a reporter in 1972 that he once dived into the harbour and swam to Hong Kong Island, ‘forwards and backwards’.

  Regimental orders kept excessive drinking to a minimum, though Oliver and his comrades always managed an almighty booze-up at least once a month. On one highly memorable occasion they got slaughtered absolutely free of charge when the platoon was given a guided tour round a local brewery. They were led into a large, white-tiled room where a solitary pipe sticking out of the wall was turned on and out gushed beer. A sergeant pointed to a row of mugs hanging on hooks on the wall, saying, ‘You’ve got exactly one hour.’ There was a stampede. When time was up the soldiers could barely stagger to the waiting truck, which took the bumpiest road in all of China to return them to camp. ‘The amount of vomit that was deposited in the back had to be smelled to be believed,’ Ollie recalled. He’d also come to realize why the choice of vehicle was a tipper lorry. Back at barracks the commandant ordered the rear end to be tipped up and out slid the vomit and the soldiers in one big, revolting pile.

  Extra For Hire

  Oliver’s National Service had drawn to an end and although he didn’t think he made a particularly successful soldier he nevertheless took pride in the fact that he’d served with the RAMC. ‘He loved the Royal Army Medical Corp,’ says Mark. ‘He used to talk about how they were the most decorated regiment in the British army.’ For the rest of his life Ollie was in love with all things military. His widow Josephine says he was constantly quoting his old army number and during the Falklands war tried his best to volunteer. ‘I think he phoned up and they were very kind and polite and said that perhaps he was a little old. But he was very supportive of all the armed forces.’

  In 1977, when the fire service went on strike and the army’s ‘Green Goddess’ fire engines took over, Mark was awoken at one o’clock in the morning by a grinning Ollie. ‘Come on, we’re going to have a drink with the bucko boys.’ Mark, who was about sixteen at the time, remembers helping his father fill the car boot with Thermos flasks of booze and bottles of whisky and driving to his local fire station in Dorking. Pulling up at the gate, they were informed by the pickets that the soldiers were at a barracks in Redhill. Ollie didn’t know how to get to Redhill, so drove to the nearest police station, where a helpful desk sergeant told him, ‘Right, Mr Reed, you go this way, over that roundabout.’ After a five-mile trek they were in Redhill but still clueless as to the whereabouts of the barracks, when Ollie spotted a police car and flashed his lights. It stopped and a copper got out. ‘Oh yes, Mr Reed, we heard you were coming. I can take you as far as the barracks gate.’ Off they went again, with a police escort, and finally arrived around two o’clock in the morning. ‘We rang the bell,’ says Mark, ‘and these officers came down and helped us take in all these boxes of booze. We had a quick drink with the soldiers and then drove home again. You couldn’t do something like that now. Times have changed.’

  On another occasion Ollie was holidaying in Barbados when HMS Fearless came into port. The officers were using Ollie’s hotel bar as their mess and when they arrived in their nicely pressed shore-going kit, of course his eyes lit up. ‘Ah, gentlemen, would you care for a drink?’ It became an amazing piss-up that turned into a game of Follow My Leader, with the navy guys trotting behind Ollie as he marched twice round the outdoor swimming pool, then on to the diving board and into the water. The next morning Ollie was sitting by the pool nursing a not inconsiderable hangover when he heard the low pulsating noise of rotor blades. A helicopter was hovering over the resort and lowering down a naval commander clutching a bottle of rum and a teddy bear as a thank you to Ollie from his fellow officers.

  Back from Hong Kong and living with Granny Dardin, Ollie soon turned his thoughts to what he wanted to achieve in life. He’d no intention of returning to his old job at the hospital, but with no qualifications or training of any kind he was limited as to what he could do. The only thing he had going for him was £100 in savings and a new personal wardrobe. ‘Out in Hong Kong you could get suits made very cheaply,’ says David. ‘So whilst he was there he got quite a big wardrobe and he came back with a trilby hat, a camel-hair coat and various good-looking suits.’ Perhaps, thought Ollie, his newly acquired dapper style might entice a rich woman to marry him and keep him until his dotage. More realistically, he decided to try his hand at male modelling and joined a photographic agency. ‘Oliver was extraordinarily good-looking when he was young,’ says David. ‘There was a mystery and a roughness and a sort of animal element to him. It was an animal attraction, his eyes were phenomenal, and gradually the film business realized it.’

  Ollie had also acquired a girlfriend and this prompted a move out of Granny Dardin’s into a room in Redcliffe Square, close to Brompton Cemetery. When that relationship didn’t work out he was soon determined to find more obliging women and his partner in crime was an Irishman who lived upstairs. Jack Burke owned a Jaguar car won in a poker game and nicknamed ‘the passion wagon’, and he and Ollie tore up and down the streets of west London in an effort to impress the girls. In truth, Ollie found female company largely easy to come by. At a house party populated by young teachers he scored with a Miss Hook, who insisted she was a virgin despite a repertoire of seasoned bedroom techniques. When, post coitus, Oliver threw doubt on her claim, Miss Hook lived up to her name by walloping him round the head.

  Money ran out to buy petrol for the Jaguar and Ollie and Jack were forced to find themselves a job. Burke was a member of the film extras’ union and held fanciful notions of maybe becoming an actor. To Ollie, it didn’t seem like such a bad ambition: after all, he’d enjoyed Shakespeare at Ewell Castle and had all that theatrical heritage, although at school it was David who did all the optional drama classes, not Ollie. ‘However, I do remember before National Service he joined an amateur dramatic group in Wimbledon. That was the first indication of going down that road.’

  Like thousands of would-be actors Oliver wrote to theatrical repertory companies asking for work; he was turned down flat for lack of experience. ‘That being the case, I decided to invent a career.’ Overnight his CV took on the appearance of a seasoned pro’s, with appearances in everything from Othello to the most avant-garde plays in places like Wagamoomoo in Australia. ‘What I did not realize was that the people to whom I addressed my shining history knew full well that the theatres where I’d given my breathtaking performances did not exist.’ Drawing another blank, Ollie decided to turn for advice to Uncle Carol, for whom he had enormous fondness and respect, even if trips to see him had been all too rare. ‘You see,’ says David, ‘my father and Carol fell out big time and didn’t talk for many a year. Carol started his career in the theatre and Peter saw him holding a spear on stage and made the remark, “What the bloody hell are you doing holding a spear!” And, rather like Ollie taking objection to things Peter told him, Carol was the same and reacted quite badly. Of course, Carol went on to a successful career but it t
ook many, many years to get over that feud.’

  By that stage Carol Reed had a string of highly respected films to his name as a director, including The Way Ahead (1944), a superb war drama and fitting tribute to the bravery of the ordinary soldier, Odd Man Out (1947), which featured James Mason as an IRA member on the run, and his masterpiece The Third Man (1949), often cited as the best British film ever made. He was also by then a ‘sir’, having the honour of being only the second British film director, after Alexander Korda, to be knighted.

  Ollie had seen Sir Carol shortly before going off on National Service, visiting the set of his glossy circus romp Trapeze and having his photograph taken inside the circus ring with Burt Lancaster and Gina Lollobrigida. But as he walked down the King’s Road in Chelsea towards Carol’s opulent house at number 213, today a Grade II listed building, he was overcome by nerves. ‘Not of the man, who was full of sweetness and charm, but of the powerful film director who just happened to be my father’s brother.’ Maybe Ollie was fearful that his visit would be misinterpreted. ‘He didn’t want to be seen taking advantage of the relationship,’ says David. It was advice and guidance he wanted, no more.

  Invited into the drawing room, Ollie sat down awkwardly and as he explained his wish to become an actor Sir Carol listened politely and intently. The stage, Ollie said, did not really hold any interest for him, he wanted to work in films. That may be so, said Uncle Carol, but he still needed some kind of formal training. RADA was suggested. Ollie shook his head: he believed all drama teachers either couldn’t hack it in the real world or just weren’t good enough to act. ‘I also think he just wanted to get going and start earning,’ says Simon. ‘It was a case of, let’s get some money. That’s it really. I want money, I want it quickly. He saw acting as a pay cheque. Also RADA was a bit establishment.’