What Fresh Lunacy is This?

by Robert Sellers

  David had done an amazing job with Oliver, but in retrospect there were times when perhaps it would have been more advantageous if he had been managed by a mainstream agent used to dealing with temperamental and challenging artists. Someone who wouldn’t have put up with the antics. But then Ollie didn’t really want to be managed. And that’s the crux of it. David remembers Ollie being particularly rude to a very important agent in America who could have furthered his career. ‘And Americans can’t put up with bad behaviour for long, they’re from puritan stock, and this agent took violent objection to him.’ And so it suited Ollie to have David running his affairs, someone he both knew and trusted, someone who understood his foibles and inadequacies, and it worked brilliantly for a very long time.

  David wasn’t just leaving Oliver, he was quitting the rat race. Yachting had been one of his great passions, ever since Ollie gave him the money to buy his first boat back in the sixties. Now he and Muriel packed everything up and sailed off for almost ten years. ‘We didn’t have a house, we lived on our boat. We sailed down to the Mediterranean and all the way out to the Greek islands, just very slowly wandering around.’

  One of their first ports of call was Guernsey, to see Ollie. Their parting had not been amicable, with Ollie surprised and a little shocked by his brother’s departure. The reason for David’s visit was to hand over the account books and other business documents to Josephine. ‘We arranged to meet at a hotel,’ recalls David. ‘And so Mickie and I were sitting in this restaurant-cum-bar and Ollie came down the stairs and both of us looked at him and we knew, you could see he’d gone. So we just had a quick drink and then we left, went back to the harbour, jumped on the boat, and off we went to the Mediterranean.’ David was never to see his brother alive again.

  With his film career in terminal decline, Ollie plumbed new depths by teaming up with Alex Higgins to release an inexcusable version of the Troggs’ ‘Wild Thing’. To plug the single he appeared on the youth programme The Word, another infamous chat show outing in which viewers were left to make up their own minds whether he was pissed out of his skull or play-acting. All Josephine could do, like the rest of his family, was look away. ‘God knows why he did The Word. If I could stop him doing a chat show I would. I absolutely hated them. Sometimes I did put my foot down. Do you really, really want to do this?’

  Like most of the people who cared about Oliver, Josephine knew these types of shows were out to set him up. In the case of The Word they put a hidden camera in his dressing room and supplied him with vodka. An obviously intelligent man, why did Ollie keep falling into these traps when he must have known he was being exploited? Perhaps he felt obliged to do them if there was something to promote. It was also a way of keeping his profile alive. Yet it was no longer the profile of an artist but of a public clown, an image that Ollie had cultivated and propagated for so long until it was almost all that was left of him.

  One interesting offer did finally come Ollie’s way in 1993, a supporting role in the sequel to Lonesome Dove, one of the most successful mini-series in American television history and something he himself had watched. ‘He fell in love with that first series,’ says Sarah. ‘He was a big fan of Robert Duvall and would say to me, “Just watch him, he’s absolutely magic. He sits on a horse and he’ll just flick a fly off him but it’s magic.” Like Ollie, he had that stillness.’ In Return to Lonesome Dove Oliver was actually a last-minute replacement for Nicol Williamson, who was forced to pull out of the production. Ollie had been on the original shortlist to play the role of a ruthless cattle baron, but the producers regarded him as too high a risk. Now, with shooting already under way, it was in something of a panic that a call was put through to him and within forty-eight hours he and Josephine were on the set in Montana. ‘And from the get-go he was everything we had hoped for in the role,’ says director Mike Robe. ‘He was glad to be there. He brought with him enormous prestige. He was a commanding personality, even in his silence. And there was not a whiff of attitude and no star treatment.’

  In Oliver, Robe sensed a man who was at relative peace with himself. ‘For all of his reputation and for all of his purported bad behaviour, I thought he was a man with a really good heart who was, I think, coming to terms with a lot of stuff that had gone on before in his life.’ He sensed also someone eager to prove himself and make a good impression. Oliver was smart enough to know that filmmakers talk to other filmmakers. When an actor is considered for a part, the first thing that happens is the last director he or she worked for is contacted to see how things went. Savvy to this, Oliver would, for example, always be the first one back to the set from lunch; he’d be sitting there ready to start before most of the crew even got back. ‘I think that showed a great respect for the work,’ says Robe. ‘I also think it showed a determination that he was going to do well in this role at this particular time in his life and career.’ Ollie was also working with a very young actress, playing his wife, by the name of Reese Witherspoon. She’d not done much by that time and he was never less than the perfect gentleman, both patient and giving. ‘They worked really well together,’ says Robe. ‘And Oliver was great in the role. He brought such gravitas to it. When he’s on screen he completely commands your attention.’

  With David gone, Josephine had taken over all the duties he’d been responsible for, while ICM remained Oliver’s agent. After completing work on Lonesome Dove Josephine and Oliver were put in contact with an important agent who, it was hoped, might be able to help Ollie. But without David, any momentum that may have been taken by appearing in a high-profile project was lost.

  In the summer of 1994 Oliver and Josephine decided to move from Guernsey. Partly it was a financial decision, the need to downsize once again because there wasn’t enough work, and partly a realization that they had never been truly happy on the island. ‘Guernsey is beautiful and we had lovely friends there,’ says Josephine. ‘But it was too small and there were too many pubs and lots of tourists would find him and want to drink with him. I don’t think he overly enjoyed his time in Guernsey. It was not the happiest time.’

  Briefly they thought about a return to England, but Josephine’s village and those surrounding Pinkhurst had changed almost out of all recognition since they left, with locals priced out of the property market by rich Londoners using the area as a weekend retreat. To a large extent the heart and soul of these places had been ripped out: it was an England Ollie no longer recognized or wanted to be a part of.

  ‘How about Ireland?’ he suggested out of the blue one day. For years Ireland had held a special place in Ollie’s heart. In the late sixties and early seventies, when life got too much, he’d often flee to his farmhouse in County Clare and as early as 1971 was telling reporters of his dream of one day moving there permanently. ‘Ollie loved the Irish,’ says David. ‘The Irish people are lovely, they’re spontaneously social.’ But Josephine was unsure: save for a couple of trips to Dublin with Ollie she didn’t know the country at all. By chance Josephine’s mother Anne was about to embark on a driving holiday there and Josephine was elected to go with her. ‘It’ll give you a chance to suss the place out,’ said Ollie. They went for ten days, driving huge distances, and Josephine fell in love with the idyllic scenery, coming back with handfuls of estate agents’ details. Poring over them at home, Ollie and Josephine planned a trip themselves to the south-west to look at houses between the city of Cork and Skibbereen. ‘We were trying to find somewhere pretty, and also near to the airport because of work and travelling, but we couldn’t see anything we liked.’

  It was Anne who found it, an advertisement for a house in Horse and Hound magazine. Castle McCarthy was a Georgian house located near Churchtown in north County Cork. It looked so promising that the couple headed over to Ireland to check it out. Having arrived in Churchtown, they popped into a pub called O’Brien’s to order two whiskies and seek directions to the house. As they drove up to the place something just clicked. It was perfect and they sealed the deal that ve
ry day. While they were back in O’Brien’s for more whiskies the bush telegraph was on fire that Oliver Reed was buying Castle McCarthy and the pub soon filled up with inquisitive locals wanting to see the famous film star.

  Churchtown is a stone village surrounded by beautiful rolling countryside. Although it has changed a lot in recent years, when Ollie and Josephine moved in nothing much of anything went on. ‘There was just one pub and one little shop,’ recalls Josephine. ‘I wondered at first how we’d manage because we didn’t know anybody there. When we moved to Guernsey we already knew lots of people, but we didn’t know anybody in Ireland. No one. And I remember thinking, Jesus, what are we doing?’ At first the locals were understandably suspicious of their motives for moving there, thinking they’d just be using Castle McCarthy as a holiday home. ‘But when they realized we’d sold everything and this was our home, they were lovely,’ says Josephine. ‘And we very quickly made some lovely friends.’

  The house itself wasn’t particularly spacious, but what had first caught Ollie’s fancy was its eighteen acres of land, another chance to create one of his wild gardens. The first thing he did, aside from finding a space to stand his old faithful Hornby, was to lay a stone path through the grounds. Then up went some fencing and a gazebo and another brick wall that was made to look like it had been there a hundred years. Finally the trees. ‘He loved trees,’ says Josephine. ‘He was always planting trees for the next generation. Always.’ And in Ireland Ollie put up something like three hundred hazels and Scots pines, largely to encourage one of his favourite animals, the red squirrel. As with all of his previous homes, he adored creating a space in which nature was left alone to roam. From his bedroom window he often looked through binoculars across the fields, watching a family of hares playing in the field, or a pair of hawks that lived nearby.

  In another field Ollie grew vegetables and, in a tradition that began at Broome Hall, he pitched his gardening prowess against that of other local enthusiasts in an annual vegetable-growing competition. One year it might be beans or marrows and then onions. ‘And every year we’d pile down to the local pub for the weighing ceremony,’ remembers Josephine. ‘And he’d proudly present whatever he’d grown. I don’t think he ever won anything, but it never stopped him trying.’ One gardening story that still brings a smile to Josephine’s face is the time she strapped Ollie into a large grass strimmer and then went off to meet someone for lunch. ‘Coming back, he hadn’t been able to get out of it, and there he was sitting in a chair in the lounge watching television with it still on.’

  For the first time since his Broome Hall days Ollie decided against any major renovations of the house, so about all they did was to knock the kitchen through to the dining room to make it one big room. ‘His main thing in Ireland was the garden,’ says Josephine. More significantly, whereas Broome Hall had its cellar bar, Pinkhurst its cider shed and Guernsey its bar above the garage, Ollie didn’t feel the need in Ireland to build anything at all. Had the great man finally mellowed? Many who knew him from this period suggest that indeed he had – slightly.

  Much of that was down to his new life in Ireland. ‘He was very content and happy here,’ says Josephine. It was a very simple, rural existence. There would be the occasional day trip to Cork or Galway or maybe to the races, but mostly, in Josephine’s words, ‘We were homebodies.’ And visitors were rare, especially those from Ollie’s old roaring days. Paul and Nora Friday did pay him a visit, though. ‘And he was so sweet,’ says Nora. ‘He spent days getting the bedrooms ready for you and things like that, just putting nice touches in, especially for our daughter Louise.’

  Alex Higgins was another guest. They’d walk the dogs together, drink, and get up to their usual bravado. During one visit Ollie pulled a lance off the wall and chased Higgins round the house with it.

  Conspicuous by their absence were David, Simon and Mark. None of them came to see Oliver in Ireland, proof perhaps of a growing remoteness between himself and his immediate family.

  Certainly Oliver had chosen to distance himself from his father. When Kay, Simon’s mother, died, the Epsom house was sold and Oliver bought Peter a flat in Wimbledon but seldom visited him. ‘Ollie was really at a tangent to our lives then,’ claims Simon. Josephine simply puts it down to the fact that the Reed siblings were never as needful of one another as perhaps other families were. It was never going to be, let’s all get together for Sunday lunch and play happy families. ‘They were all very fond of one another but they didn’t need each other. So I don’t think he was isolated in that sense.’

  Sarah, on the other hand, made a number of trips over to Churchtown and was particularly struck by the change in her father. ‘I think he felt he’d come home in Ireland. I think he found a great peace there. And he definitely had mellowed: we were getting on far better. He still wasn’t always easy, but we were definitely more comfortable in each other’s company.’

  On one trip Sarah brought her boyfriend Mark to stay. Everything was going well, but it was noticeable that every time Mark went to put his hand on Sarah he’d get a stern look from Ollie. Later that evening, when Sarah wanted to go to bed, poor Mark was on the receiving end of one of Ollie’s most menacing glares. ‘Er, I’ll be up later,’ he said. He never was. ‘My father couldn’t cope with the idea of us being under the same roof in the same bed, he found that quite tricky, even though I was a grown woman,’ explains Sarah. ‘So he kept him up all night.’

  Again one of Ollie’s joys was walking the dogs and he’d continued his habit of picking up strays. By the time he died there were six living in the house. ‘And all of them used to sleep on the bed,’ says Sarah. ‘He just loved them. His idea of bliss would be when he was in “clinic”, or off the booze. It would be the cricket on the telly and all his dogs with him on the bed.’ There’s a delightful story of Oliver driving one day near Churchtown and spotting a dog in the middle of the road. He stopped the car at the same time as a woman going the other way. Both of them wound down their windows. ‘How many have you got?’ she asked. ‘Five,’ replied Ollie. ‘I’ve got six, you take it,’ said the woman.

  In Ireland Sarah felt her father could relax more and be himself, without the aggro he could get sometimes in England and in Guernsey when someone wanted to take him on or drink him under the table. Here he could enjoy the craic in O’Brien’s bar with his friends, gossip and laugh, or, if he wanted just to sit by himself and mind his own business, he was always given space to do so. ‘Ireland made him feel very happy because everyone took him at face value. They didn’t give a hoot about who or what he was. He was Ollie and he was a little bit eccentric and because of that he fitted in perfectly.’

  Naturally Oliver made many a trip to O’Brien’s: it became his second home and the landlord Pat O’Brien a close friend. ‘Oliver was a pretty regular customer, but then he’d take a few days off, to give the system a chance to recover. When Oliver was in the pub he liked the place to be lively, he didn’t like everybody just looking into their pints and saying nothing. So if that was happening he’d start off with a soliloquy from Shakespeare or one of his movie parts and he was hoping that somebody would tell him to just shut the fuck up. Sometimes it happened and sometimes it didn’t.’ Anyway it had the desired effect of creating a good atmosphere.

  On those nights when the bar was busy the drinks were usually on Ollie. ‘Could I have a canter round the paddock?’ he’d say when he wanted to buy a round. As in the past, there was a core group of people Ollie drank with but also a bunch of freeloaders whom he tolerated and was never judgemental about. O’Brien remembers one old friend coming down to visit all the way from Northern Ireland. When his taxi arrived the driver presented him with a bill for £450, which Oliver paid without question.

  O’Brien recalls few occasions when things got out of control with Oliver. There was one evening, however, when the pub was very quiet, just Ollie and this other fellow who was dressed in what looked like army fatigues. Oliver walked over to him and ask
ed, ‘Are you in the IRA?’, which was like a red rag to a bull. Straightaway the two men squared up to each other and O’Brien had to jump in and separate them. He manhandled Ollie out of the door and the other guy was allowed to finish his pint in peace. When the man left the bar he drove his car methodically around the roundabout that faced the pub, blazing his headlights straight into Ollie and O’Brien’s eyes. He did this six times and each time O’Brien did his best to stop Ollie jumping on the car’s bonnet.

  As an extra service to his customers O’Brien took horse-racing bets. Sharing his love of horses and racing, Ollie treated him one year to a trip to Epsom for the Derby. They both went over dressed up to the nines in top hat and tails and stayed at the Gatwick Hilton. ‘We went out that night and had the usual gargantuan amount of drink,’ recalls O’Brien. ‘We came back to the hotel and there was this fat, loud American fella with red braces, and Oliver took exception to him straightaway and called the head of security to have him removed from the hotel but to no avail, so he was absolutely in foul humour after that.’

  The following morning Johnny Placett hired a stretch limo full of booze to take them to the races. ‘And Ollie headed straight into the bar in the Queen’s Stand and started ordering champagne,’ says O’Brien. ‘And he was there for the whole day, he never saw a horse. The Queen, she usually comes out before the Derby to have a look at the horses, and she was coming down the stairs and Oliver was lying down on the floor, with empty champagne bottles all around him, and he was just sober enough to realize who was there and to do the necessary, and he doffed his hat and said, “Ma’am”.’ When the day finished O’Brien went to collect Ollie and help him back to the car. ‘And of course everybody recognized him and they were all shouting, “Good on you, Ollie!”’