What Fresh Lunacy is This?

by Robert Sellers

  If Ollie wasn’t filming, weekends were indeed special occasions at Broome Hall. It would be down to the pub on both Saturday and Sunday and at lunchtime everyone would pile into cars to go to the Curry Garden in Dorking, and then back to Broome Hall for games. These usually took place in the cellar bar. ‘The games there could get quite raucous,’ remembers Christensen. ‘Ollie had a collection of military helmets and some of the games used to entail breaking bottles of wine over people’s heads wearing the helmets. All you had to remember was to sink your head into your shoulders so you didn’t get a crooked neck. There would be wine and glass flying all over the fucking shop, and poor old Jenny would be cleaning it up the next day.’

  The cellar bar was deep in the bowels of Broome Hall, near the huge, noisy boilers, and women were barred from the place. ‘You were very honoured if you were allowed inside to have a drink with the boys,’ recalls Jacquie. Sarah remembers it as a particularly scary place for a young child. ‘I was allowed in there but it was more of a man’s domain. I didn’t like it, it was dark and dingy and there was a hole in the wall as you walked down to it where dad put this skeleton. I think it was a real one, so that wasn’t particularly appealing.’ Taking pride of place in the cellar bar was the Thorhill Glass, which held the equivalent of a bottle of wine. At dinner Ollie would announce, ‘All Thorhill members be upstanding.’ Those remaining seated had the chance to become members if they so desired. ‘This entailed Oliver filling the glass up with red wine, right to the top,’ remembers Paul Friday. ‘And you had to drink it down in one, the whole bottle, and then put the glass on top of your head.’ Things got even sillier when Ollie introduced a system of Thorhills 1, 2 and 3. Friday, along with Oliver’s son Mark, qualified as a Thorhill 2, which required drinking two bottles, straight down, over the course of a meal. Invited over one evening, Friday knew that he was going to be cajoled into doing a Thorhill 3. This called for some clever scheming on his part, since Ollie would go round all the toilets after dinner making sure there were no splashes of red wine on any of the pans. Friday came up with the perfect plan. Just outside the back door Bill Dobson had left a wheelbarrow full of grass cuttings, and if he could get to that and dig a hole, he’d be OK. ‘And that’s what happened,’ recalls Friday. ‘So Ollie and myself were the only members of the Thorhill 3, but I actually cheated. Although he never knew I cheated.’

  There was also the Penicillin Glass. ‘That was probably the safest thing to drink out of,’ says Christensen. ‘Because it was literally thick, crusted penicillin lining this V-shaped crystal glass, and whatever alcohol was drunk from it the glass was never cleaned, just left to dry, so it had this thick scab which took up almost half the volume of the thing.’

  At Broome Hall Ollie resurrected the Portley Club, which had its origins in Wimbledon. If Ollie called a meeting members were obliged to turn up, and if they failed to do so, the meeting would go on regardless, in an extremely expensive restaurant, and the missing member was obliged to foot the bill. Sometimes meetings took place in the cellar bar, sometimes in the beautiful ‘grand dining room’. Again games were played. ‘Somewhere along the way Ollie had acquired this huge assegai spear,’ remembers Christensen. ‘It was so long that if you held it upright it could clear the floor by an inch and clear the ceiling by an inch. And the members had to drink a bottle of port down in one, including all the sludge, because Ollie liked vintage port, and then carry this spear round the dining-room table without touching the floor or the ceiling. If you could do that then it was the next person’s go. If you failed you had to drink another bottle of port down in one and do it again.’

  The Cricketers Arms, in the nearby village of Ockley, quickly became Ollie’s local pub. The landlord was Ray Figg, and quite often in the mornings if he felt under the weather from the exertions of the night before, Ray opened his bedroom window and dropped the key down for Ollie and his pals to open up themselves. Should a customer stroll in fancying a quick drink, Ollie would seize the opportunity for a bit of fun. Seeing no one behind the bar, they’d begin to chunter a bit and jingle their change. ‘Didn’t you see the sign outside?’ Ollie would say. ‘It’s a free house, you just help yourself.’ So you had these people going behind the bar to get a gin and tonic, with Ollie directing. ‘Well, the gin’s there and you’ll find the tonic on that shelf.’ It was pure mischievousness. ‘It was about seeing people’s reactions to the unconventional,’ says Mark. ‘People expect routines and conformity and things to work in a certain way and when it doesn’t that’s what he found was fun.’

  It was the Cricketers that played host to one of Ollie’s most amusing deeds. Drinking with friends one lunchtime he suddenly decided to climb up inside the chimney for a rest, and at once fell asleep on a ledge. ‘At five o’clock in the evening they changed the pub over to a restaurant,’ relates Mick Monks, ‘and there’s a couple sitting having their soup, just arrived, and down comes Ollie, down the chimney. Frightened the life out of them. Banned for a week, I think. They daren’t ban him for any longer: it’s half your trade gone.’

  Another time at the Cricketers, Ollie heard the landlord had been refused a one-off extension to his evening licence. After thinking for a moment, he suggested Ray do it the other way round instead: get an extension to open early in the morning and have an insomniacs party. That evening Ollie told his usual crew to arrive the following morning at 7.45 a.m. wearing their night attire. Ollie showed in his pyjamas, slippers and a dressing gown. ‘It was hilarious,’ recalls Christensen. ‘But a darn sight more funny when the pub opened properly and people on their way down to Bognor Regis for the weekend stopped in at lunchtime and there’s thirty pissed people in their pyjamas. And, knowing Ollie, he liked his baggy old stripy pyjamas with everything hanging out at the front.’

  One of Christensen’s other jobs was to look after the horses. Broome Hall came complete with a stable block, except there were no horses in it, save for good old Dougal. That quickly changed when Ollie took the decision to start breeding a new line of large, fast horses called heavy hunters, which were produced by mating thoroughbred stallions with shire mares. ‘People thought he was mad until he started winning stuff at Hickstead. Not jumping, but at showing,’ recalls Christensen. The things were popping out each and every year. ‘The fields became full of little foals running around,’ says David. ‘They were very sweet.’

  Soon the stables became a hive of activity as several grooms were taken on to help with the breeding programme. ‘He was passionate about whatever he got into,’ says Mark. ‘And he was passionate about breeding horses. I remember at one time they had twenty horses there, at vast expenditure.’ It became a dream of Ollie’s to breed a horse that would go on to win the Horse of the Year Show. That, alas, never happened; indeed, according to David, he rarely even rode them. ‘It was just an indulgence. He was playing, in his mind, the country squire.’

  An indulgence of an altogether different kind of horse power was cars. Oliver had always loved driving and the sensation of a good motor car, but not in the technical sense: you wouldn’t catch Ollie slaving away under the bonnet on a Sunday afternoon. No, it was more the ownership, and when the money started rolling in he totally spoiled himself. Around the time of Women in Love Ollie saw a yellow Jaguar in a car showroom and bought it. Christened ‘the Banana’, it was followed by a Jensen, ‘which he thrashed up around the fields,’ says Muriel. There was also an open-top Rolls-Royce which, according to David, Ollie drove into a bridge on his estate. Then another Roller, purchased from Michael Winner. It was in this, in the early seventies, that Ollie was caught drink-driving while going over Battersea Bridge. David was at home when he got a call from the police.

  ‘Are you the brother of Oliver Reed?’ said a faintly ominous voice.

  ‘Yes,’ said David, dreading what might be coming next.

  ‘We’ve got him in a police cell.’

  Off David went to collect Ollie and learned that he’d also given a sample of blood, which afte
r analysis came back borderline. David felt they had a case and it went to the High Court. ‘It turned out that the judge had only just been sworn in, so this was his very first case. Our barrister, who was very famous and experienced, wrapped the police case up in knots, and with a bow on top. The prosecution counsel didn’t know whether he was coming or going and the judge was losing the plot too.’ Calling a halt to proceedings, the judge ushered Ollie’s barrister and the prosecution into a side room for a conference. An audible rumble went around the court room, everyone assuming the case was being dismissed.

  The Chief Constable had been the last witness on the stand and, stepping off, he walked over to Oliver. ‘Well done, Ollie. Would you like your blood sample as a souvenir?’ he said, and handed over a small plastic container. Back at Broome Hall, Ollie kept little mementoes on display in the cellar bar, and this would make a fine addition. Just then the judge returned and, banging his gavel, announced, ‘Right, back on with the case.’ It wasn’t finished, after all. The prosecution stood up. ‘May I present to the court a sample of Mr Reed’s blood.’ Everyone stared at the Chief Constable, who had turned bright red with embarrassment. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve just given it to Mr Reed.’

  In the end Ollie was found guilty, despite the fact he was only 1 per cent above the legal limit. ‘Not enough to get a newt slightly merry,’ he complained. The judge fined him £5 and disqualified him from driving for a year. When Ollie went to pay the fine, the clerk said, ‘I’ve never seen such a low fine in my life.’ To which Oliver replied, ‘I’ve never seen such a travesty of justice in all my life.’

  For a while David took to driving Ollie around, though sometimes it was Muriel’s task. Then one lunchtime Oliver was in the Hand in Hand and this enterprising guy showed up. ‘Mr Reed, I understand you’re looking for a driver.’ Ollie threw him the car keys. ‘Take the Rolls round the block and if you bring it back without a dent you’re hired.’ And he did. Ollie gave him a job on the spot and Martin came to live at Broome Hall. Jacquie remembers him as ‘really quite sweet, a public school chap, but very bumbling, and he had a terrible habit of picking his nose and wiping it on parts of the car while he was driving’. One day Martin got a clip over the head from Ollie. ‘If I ever see you doing that again, you’re out!’ From then on he was always known as Snotter Martin. Ollie also thought he looked ‘more suitable as the driver of a sewage wagon than the chauffeur of a smart new limousine’. In the end he was made to wear a uniform. The union lasted less than two years. After several bumps, scrapes and near-misses, Snotter resigned by throwing the car keys at Ollie. Ollie hit him. ‘You are very rude, Snotter. You’re fired.’

  ‘No I’m not,’ the chauffeur said. ‘I resign.’ Ollie hit him again. ‘I was never in the army, but I look upon my eighteen months with you, Mr Reed, as my National Service.’

  Ollie continued his love affair with cars, which included the purchase of an Aston Martin. David had treated himself to one too. ‘Second-hand, I hasten to add, and I collected Ollie at Gatwick airport and he went, “Bloody hell!” He had a Rolls at the time that did eleven miles to the gallon, and I was the agent and mine did nine. So then he immediately went off and bought a second-hand Aston Martin, but this one was the James Bond type, a DB5.’

  Another time Ollie bought a huge American jeep with roll bars and began testing it out in the fields with a view to using it somehow in one of his military games. One afternoon he was driving the thing around in ever tighter circles. Christensen was sitting in the front passenger seat, with old Bill Dobson in the back, and getting rather agitated. ‘You ought to be careful, Ollie, as the circles get tighter you wanna reduce your speed or you’re going to roll it.’

  ‘Don’t tell me how to drive my own fucking jeep,’ roared Ollie.

  Bang – he rolled it. ‘And we got thrown out,’ recalls Christensen. ‘Thank God the vehicle rolled away from us. I wasn’t seriously injured, nor was Ollie, but Bill was lying there saying, “I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.” He’d broken his ribs. Luckily they hadn’t punctured his lung. But he was out of combat for a while.’

  But by far the peak of Ollie’s car-buying mania was his Panther De Ville, which cost an absolute fortune and was hand-built. ‘I remember he was away filming,’ says David. ‘And he’d ring me and say, “Oh, I want a fridge put in.” That was so he could have chilled champagne and lager or whatever. So I’d keep having to go round to the factory giving them all these instructions. He also had a licensed shotgun at the time, so we put a pouch for this gun along the front end of the back seat.’

  The bodywork of the De Ville resembled a Bugatti, and the bonnet was seriously long, which made driving, especially in crowded cities, difficult, if not hazardous, according to David. ‘If you were coming out of a car park you had to be terribly careful because the nose would arrive on the pavement first and you didn’t know who or what was there. It was a very difficult car to drive, but Ollie loved it.’ The car was finished in gold over brown, and as a final touch Ollie had his National Service commission number inscribed on the filler cap.

  Note that the cars mentioned – Jaguar, Rolls-Royce, Aston Martin, Jensen, De Ville – all have one thing in common: they’re British. Ollie’s patriotism even extended to the car he chose to buy. It was reported that when a friend turned up one day at Broome Hall in a new Mercedes, Ollie tried to urinate on it.

  Bulgaria circa 1972 wasn’t the most exotic location to make a film in: it was grindingly poor, regimented and depressing. Into this flew Ollie. The film he’d come to make was Days of Fury, a bleak and savage historical drama from the pen of British playwright Edward Bond. Ollie plays Palizyn, a tyrannical eighteenth-century Russian landowner, who allows a stranger, played by John McEnery, to enter his community and become his servant, treating him worse than a dog. But the stranger has an ulterior motive, to avenge the death of his parents at the hands of Palizyn and to stoke up revolution among the people. This sad and desolate period of history is brilliantly recreated on screen, with an almost documentary realism, but as entertainment the film is a bit of a slog to watch. Ollie’s dark looks are again a terrific bonus in his portrayal of Palizyn, and he gives an assured performance, pulling off the feat of making the man appear brutish while retaining an air of nobility. And, as with all Oliver’s villains, there’s more than a hint of vulnerability and insecurity.

  Based in Sophia, the Bulgarian capital, Ollie and the rest of the cast and crew were transported the hour’s drive into the desolate countryside where the sets had been built. Between takes he was determined to teach an eighteen-year-old French actress named Carole André how to speak cockney rhyming slang. Poor Carole never really got the hang of it but did grow enormously fond of Ollie. Having recently worked with Visconti on Death in Venice, she had been cast as Irene, Palizyn’s foster daughter, for whom he harbours lustful thoughts that lead to her traumatic rape. It was obviously a difficult scene to shoot, especially for such a young actress, but Oliver made sure that before a foot of celluloid was taken Carole was fine with everything. Unfortunately something went wrong. The Italian director wanted it very realistic, saying, ‘So Oliver is going to really rip your clothes off, but when you don’t feel comfortable any more just say stop in Italian so that I understand.’ As Carole recalls, because of some miscommunication Oliver didn’t know this, ‘And so he’s ripping my clothes off and I said, “OK, all right, this is enough,” and I started shouting, “Stop, stop,” and obviously [it] being a rape scene Oliver continued and the director didn’t stop filming either. It ended up being a very awkward and embarrassing situation and Ollie was absolutely as adorable as he could have been about it, he was so apologetic, saying he had nothing to do with it, and I totally believe that he didn’t. He was so protective of me, he really looked upon me as a child.’

  For Carole, on her own in Bulgaria and feeling extremely vulnerable (her mother died during filming and she had to go back for the funeral), Ollie took on the persona of a big brother.
‘He knew that I was very lonely and I think people that drink always have a very sensitive part to them, as crazy as they can get under the influence. I think this need to lose yourself in alcohol stems from people that are insecure, very sensitive, and need friends, and I was in a similar situation in Bulgaria, where I felt very tender and lonely and alone, and I think Ollie hooked into that. I thought he was terrific and it was so nice to have somebody you felt was on your side.’

  As luck would have it Oliver’s next film, a spirited comedy drama called Dirty Weekend, also co-starred Carole, so their friendship easily picked up again on location in Italy. ‘It was great working with Ollie again, it was fun, it was cool. I was quite a shy person back then, quite reserved, so it was not easy for me to feel comfortable on the set, but with Ollie I did, always. Since that relationship we had in Bulgaria, where I felt that he would never hurt me in any way, either physically or emotionally, I would have done anything for him because I did feel like there was somebody that was looking out for me. Although for some reason – because in Bulgaria he kept it more hidden – that’s when I noticed he had some issues with drinking.’

  It wasn’t difficult to miss. Reg was around and a few other chums and in the evening there was the usual trawl through unknown streets for a place to drink. One press story had them fighting some Mafia types. Outside one particular bar Ollie and Reg were approached by a vicious-looking local bastard. Fearing he was going to be attacked, Ollie pounced and bit his nose. Just then two cars pulled up and some other sinister chaps got out. ‘I think there’s going to be a little bit of trouble here, Reg,’ said Ollie. ‘It’s the local syndicate.’ Suddenly gunfire rang out and Ollie and Reg hit the deck, only to realize it was the sound of a television set somewhere. Relieved, everyone tore into each other but seemed to spend most of their time chasing each other around parked cars. Later it was revealed that one of the Italians did indeed have Mafia connections, but instead of putting out a contract he ended up buying Ollie and Reg drinks and spaghetti.