What Fresh Lunacy is This?

by Robert Sellers

  Beryl, the woman of that elderly couple from the pub, was nearly eighty when she first joined the club, so to speak. Ollie’s dinner parties nearly always began with the main course, since he couldn’t abide starters, or, as he called them, ingy-pingy this and ingy-pingy that. He also liked to make a grand entrance when everyone else was seated. ‘And he loved gravy,’ says Jacquie. ‘But we didn’t have it in gravy boats, I had huge jugs of gravy. So he’d come in and he’d hack at the meat. He didn’t carve, he’d take it with his hands and put it on the plate. Then he’d pour a whole load of gravy over his dinner and then he’d say, “I can’t eat this shit,” and he’d sling the plate into the fireplace, where it shattered, or against a wall. And poor Beryl was sitting next to me, well she nearly had a heart attack.’

  Was this yet another instance of Ollie play-acting for shock value? ‘Who knows?’ says Jacquie. ‘Because then he’d storm out and we wouldn’t see him for a day. And there was everyone else politely eating their puddings.’ Simon remembers being told a story by Ken Russell about when he was invited to Broome Hall for dinner and there was just such an occurrence, Ollie screaming at Jacquie that the food was inedible and hurling the plate against the wall. And Ken being Ken, with that director’s eye, he looked up and said, ‘Hold on, there’s about ten other gravy marks like that one there. I think this has happened at least nine times before.’

  Another social occasion at Broome Hall took place in the summer of 1976. There was a drought and a hosepipe ban on and the local council refused permission for Ollie to fill up his outdoor swimming pool, so he decided to have a party in it instead. There were loudspeakers, flashing lights and dry ice, the works. He started the evening dressed in a red silk dressing gown, holding a sword and with a knight’s helmet covering his face. ‘And he just stood there with this sword absolutely still for half an hour,’ recalls Mark. ‘Absolutely dead still as people were arriving, not quite sure whether it was him or not. Every few minutes he’d open the visor and a big gin and tonic would go in.’

  When the party was in full swing Ollie decided it would be a good idea to jump off the edge of the pool on to one of the trestle tables covered in plates, bottles and glasses. Wham! ‘The table collapsed,’ Mark remembers. ‘Glass flew everywhere, and you thought, fuck, he’s got to have hurt himself. It was literally a starfish dive straight into this table. He got up without a mark on him.’ They say some people are untouchable, and Ollie really was. He’d do things, usually on impulse, where you thought, God, that’s fucking madness, but he got away with it; talk about a cat with nine lives. ‘I don’t know how you can get away with as much as he did,’ says Sarah. ‘He did a lot of these things for the sheer effect. He’d go, right, let’s jolly this up a bit, let’s just do it because I can and I want to.’

  *

  Life wasn’t like this all the time at Broome Hall, of course. When Ollie wasn’t filming or drinking he enjoyed peace and relaxation, enjoying his garden and going for long walks, usually on his own. He wasn’t someone who liked going out much, and Jacquie can’t remember even one occasion when they went up to London to see a play in the West End, for example. Why? ‘Because he wasn’t interested.’ Nor did they go out very often as a couple or a family to the cinema. ‘He wouldn’t go to see a film or anything like that. He’d probably only sit through half an hour of it and then walk out. He would watch a little bit of television, but there was no specific programme he liked. The television was in the library and if he happened to be wandering in and something caught his eye he might watch it, but again he would very rarely go through a whole programme. He was most unusual in that way.’

  Much of Ollie’s social time did seem to gravitate around the Cricketers and other nearby hostelries. ‘As soon as he was up he’d grab someone to go and have a drink,’ says Jacquie. ‘If he couldn’t find anyone else, I’d do. Although if I ended up behaving in a drunken fashion I would be sent to bed, so to speak, or sent to my room. He didn’t like women behaving badly.’

  One of the reasons why Ollie loved pubs so much was because the ‘real’ people whom he identified with drank there. It had been the same during his National Service, when he’d never have thought of drinking in the officers’ mess. ‘He’d go to the ratings’ bar,’ says David. The same applied to film sets, where he was much more relaxed chatting to the chippies and the props men than the producer or studio bigwigs. Take the time he was shooting an episode of The Saint at Elstree. Across the road was a pub where everyone went for a drink after filming, and you’d always see a horde of parked cars outside with their chauffeurs. Ollie himself had a driver on that show, but always invited him in for a swift one. David remembers that Tony Hancock, filming at the same time, did likewise, but everyone else left their drivers outside. ‘I thought that was quite revealing. Both Ollie and Hancock didn’t like being aloof from the driver, to them the driver was an equal.’

  Nor did Ollie socialize much with the local gentry where he lived. The exception was David Hunt, a rich businessman who lived a little bit farther up Leith Hill from Broome Hall. Ollie occasionally drank at Hunt’s place and together they inaugurated the Leith Hill Flying Club. Hunt had a huge games room-cum-bar in his house with a long beam that spanned its width. Ollie and the boys took to leaping off the end of the bar and grabbing hold of the beam. One night Muriel was there and decided to have a go, fell down, broke her knee, and was in traction for three months. Another victim of the Leith Hill Flying Club was Paul Friday, who fell awkwardly once and was in bed for a fortnight in a terrible state. ‘There was a bang on the door at three o’clock in the morning,’ Paul’s wife Nora remembers. ‘It was pouring with rain. I opened the door and there was Ollie in a pair of blue jeans and a denim jacket with nothing else underneath and he’d put all these safety pins through his skin and said, “I’m a punk rocker. Can I come in?” How can you be mad with the guy? He came in and saw Paul was in extreme pain, so the next day we carried him to the car, took him out for a beer, and laid him on the floor of the Indian restaurant and gave him a meal. Then Ollie took him to the best back surgeon in London and paid for all the treatment.’

  Ollie and David Hunt were invariably sparring or challenging each other. One bet Ollie made with Hunt in the Cricketers was that he could pee three pints of piss. All the boys went out to the gents’ toilet, milk bottles were produced, and one pint, two pints, two and a half pints, then the flow suddenly stopped. Hunt thought he’d won the fifty quid, as there was Ollie straining, but as soon as Hunt declared, ‘I’ve gotcha, you bastard,’ Ollie went, whoosh, and filled it up – three pints of piss.

  They even clashed when it came to their flagpoles. Ollie flew a Union Jack outside Broome Hall on what he always boasted was the highest flagpole in Surrey. That was until David Hunt got one just that little bit higher. Ollie retaliated by making his flagpole twenty feet higher, so Hunt added six inches to his. This kind of thing went on all the time. ‘Ollie was outrageous to poor old David,’ recalls Michael Christensen. And just as bad to other big knobs living in the area whose company he tolerated rather than enjoyed. One afternoon Ollie and Christensen were having lunch in the kitchen of Norse’s cottage when this chap turned up and invited himself in, sitting at the head of the table with his back to this flight of stairs. ‘It went a bit quiet,’ recalls Christensen. ‘Ollie looked at me and then went upstairs to the loo. Coming back down, he stopped halfway on the stairs, got his dick out and pissed on this guy’s head. And for a few seconds he was trying to work out what this sudden warmth on his head was. He was absolutely outraged – how dare you! – it was splashing all down his back, and I was biting my lip from having fits of laughter. Anyway he got up and flounced out – “I’ve never been so badly treated in my life. How dare you!” – got in his car, and fucked off. Ollie said, “Well, you did want to get shot of him, didn’t you?” I said, “Yeah, but not by pissing on him.” He came back a few days later.’

  As with Wimbledon, there was a core group of friends whom Ollie
hung around with and then a larger group of people who wanted to get in on the action. Ollie was always happy to accommodate them, but many exploited his generosity. Take a typical Broome Hall Sunday. Ollie would be holding court down the Cricketers, buying everyone drinks as usual. Then if he didn’t want the mob around him he’d shoot off early and drive to the curry house in Dorking. ‘There’d be Jacquie, Sarah, Ollie, a couple of others maybe, and me,’ says Christensen. ‘Then within half an hour there’d be forty people sitting with us and the bill would arrive and he’d pay for everyone. It’s not that he couldn’t afford it but he hadn’t actually invited them. You’d see people order lobster bhuna when they’d normally have a chicken curry, and bottles of Nuits Saint Georges wine when they used to drink a half of Carlsberg.’ This annoyed Christensen so much that he brought the matter up with Ollie. ‘But what can I do?’ he said. ‘I don’t want to suddenly start going, who’s had what? It’s too embarrassing.’ Christensen suggested that next time he ask for a separate bill.

  The following Sunday it was drinks at the Cricketers again, then off to the curry house on their own, and within fifteen minutes the crowd barged in and started ordering. Later the waiter quietly slipped Ollie the bill: it was £20 instead of the usual £200. He paid, got up, and announced, ‘I’ll see you all later if you want to come up for a beer,’ then left. Their faces fell, and suddenly the arguments started. ‘I only had one rice.’ ‘Who ordered the naan bread?’ Whether it solved the problem Christensen doesn’t know, but it was just saying, I’m not stupid, please don’t do this.

  A lot of interviews were conducted at Broome Hall, such was Ollie’s pride in the place. Sometimes the invitation came with the instruction to bring a change of clothing. ‘You’re going to be pushed in the pond or the swimming pool,’ it warned. Simon remembers taking Barbara Walters there once. At the time she was America’s top female broadcast journalist, but when she arrived Ollie refused to come down. Oh shit. This dragged on for half an hour, with Simon sweating buckets and Barbara looking agitatedly at her watch. Just as she was about to leave, Ollie arrived, all smiles and charm; just another of his japes, or had it perhaps been a power game: how long can I keep Barbara Walters waiting?

  Other interviews took place in the pub. In these circumstances the journalist was under an obligation not just to drink, but drink to excess. Midway through one grilling, Ollie stood up and pulled open his shirt to reveal his stomach. ‘Do you know what I am? I’m successful, that’s what. Destroy me and you destroy your British film industry. I’m the biggest star you’ve got.’ An accusing finger was wagged at the bewildered hack. ‘But it took years for it to dawn on you that I was worth writing about, pig, didn’t it? I’m Mr England!’

  Declaring himself to be the biggest star in Britain was actually no idle claim. Ollie had indeed established himself as an international star and was now in that select band of actors termed ‘bankable’, names that, once attached to a project, not only guaranteed its financial backing but also drew in the punters. ‘I remember going into Leicester Square and seeing three out of the four cinemas there showing Oliver’s films,’ recalls David. ‘It was amazing.’ He’d also amassed a legion of fans and admirers, mostly, it must be said, female. Some of them used to send photographs in of them chained up, in handcuffs, or standing with whips all dressed up in rubber and leather. ‘It was unbelievable,’ says Johnny Placett, who remembers Oliver showing them to him. ‘It was a real eyeopener. He was getting sackfuls of letters.’

  Christensen recalls two girls in particular who lived up in Yorkshire and worked in a factory. Once a year they saved up enough money to come down to Ockley, booked into a local hotel, and visited the Cricketers every evening for three or four days hoping Ollie might be around. ‘And a couple of times he was, and he was absolutely charming, he’d buy them drinks, he posed for photographs, he had them sitting on his lap with a big smile on his face, and then they’d be off again.’

  Of course, there was a downside to all this. Being in demand as an actor meant Ollie was away working for much of the year and so for Sarah her own father was like a stranger for much of her early years. ‘He used to come back as a different character: more facial hair, less facial hair, orange hair, black hair, moustache. I never knew who was coming back into my life.’ There was also always a big fuss made when he did return from filming, especially if he had been away a long time. Everyone would make an effort, the garden would be spruced up, the horses cleaned, and a banner placed on the bridge saying, ‘Welcome home’. ‘It was like the wanderer returning to his kingdom,’ says Sarah.

  And then when Ollie was home he invariably wanted to go off drinking with his friends. One of Sarah’s most vivid memories from childhood is of Sunday afternoons sitting on her own outside the pub for hours on end with a packet of crisps and a bottle of Coke. ‘And then it was on to the curry house, and if I got tired I just went to sleep under the table. He wasn’t a bad father, he just wasn’t very good at playing the family man.’ That went for birthdays and Christmases too. ‘That whole standing on ceremony thing didn’t work with him. He was great at preparing Christmas, but, once you got to it, it was horrible because it meant family and ritual and formality.’

  Some Christmas moments do stand out. One year it had been snowing and Ollie got Bill to dress up as Santa and walk across the lawn carrying a huge sack of presents. Ollie burst into Sarah’s bedroom and got her out of bed, and hiding behind the curtains they watched the spectacle from the window. ‘So for me Father Christmas was real until I was about twelve because I really believed it.’ Another Christmas Eve he told Sarah to shout ‘hello’ and there was this booming reply coming down the chimney. He’d got someone on the roof to shout down to her. ‘That whole make-believe thing was lovely. Also, normally you’d just leave out a tangerine and a glass of brandy for Father Christmas but no, he had to make sooty footprints, he had to leave orange peel all over the carpet, and open the brandy bottle because Santa had helped himself to it. When he had those moments they were really, really magic.’

  This was the sensitive side of Ollie that was largely hidden from the public, the gentle side that, when it emerged, was a delight and a wonder. ‘He’d want to talk to you about a piece of lavender for hours,’ remembers Sarah. ‘Or why that plant grows like that and why your dog’s nose is wet and cold. It was lovely. He’d say to me, always be inquisitive, about what you look at, what you read, what you listen to. We used to go off looking for fairies in the wood. He used to tell me they lived in the bluebells, so we’d literally get down on our knees and look inside them. There were those extraordinary moments, but the reason you really remember them is because they didn’t happen that often because he was away or he was in the pub.’

  Flying high as he was, feeling fairly invincible, now seemed the perfect time to take Ollie’s career to the next level, to get him into that A-list category among the Newmans, Redfords and McQueens, and to do that he had to conquer America, more precisely Hollywood. Ollie had yet to make an American movie, one either fully financed or made in Tinseltown. He didn’t really see the point. ‘As long as we make exciting films here, there is no real need to go to Hollywood,’ he said. ‘So I have no desire to rush off there just because of what Hollywood is supposed to represent.’ Simon puts his brother’s feelings about the place more succinctly: ‘He felt that he would be prostituting himself by going there.’

  Yet all the big British stars had already made the move now that the British film industry had gone into serious decline, thanks to a slump in ticket sales and lack of funding for homegrown movies, and on many occasions both David and Simon tried their best to persuade their brother to follow suit. Ollie would always shake his head. ‘I don’t think I can do it. I don’t really want to do it.’

  There’s a scene in The System where Jane Merrow’s character asks Oliver’s Lothario of a seaside photographer why he stays in a small town, thinking him to be the type who would have moved on to a bustling city long ago. Asked if
he likes living in the town, he replies, ‘No, not particularly.’

  ‘Then why stay?’

  ‘Perhaps I’m a little nervous of going anywhere bigger.’

  Recalling that exchange today, Jane sees it as being quite revealing. ‘That really was close for him. Oliver never quite became the massive star he could have been and it was sort of relative to the industry in England at that time. Turning Hollywood down was part of his problem because had he gone out there I think he would have become very big because they would have known what to do with him and how to make the best of him. Maybe the problem with Oliver was his ambitions didn’t go beyond having fun doing films where he was safe and comfortable amongst his mates.’

  Michael Apted agrees. ‘He was too comfortable. He had his lifestyle, which was hilarious, and he had his mates. I think not choosing to go to America was a mixture of comfort and fear; he didn’t want to make that break.’

  All the time pressure was building. Big, powerful American agents were making overtures. ‘Look, he needs to come out here.’ It would have meant a massive commitment, of course, and almost certainly it would have meant Oliver moving out to Los Angeles for a couple of years. Did he perhaps fear losing Broome Hall as a result? David was quick to put his mind to rest on that one. ‘Look, I’ll wrap Broome Hall up and put everything in mothballs. You don’t have to lose it. Just go over there, for goodness sake, it’s big money and it’s where you need to be.’ Still the answer was no. ‘He just didn’t like Hollywood,’ says Mark. ‘He didn’t like what it stood for. He just wanted to be in his little local boozer, do his movie, and be out of there.’