Oliver Reed
At 16, Ollie Reed found work as a bouncer. Not that this experience proved much help when, in 1963, two drinkers left him needing 36 stitches. Reed thought his career as a leading man was over - at least until director Ken Russell cast him in Women In Love. For his efforts, Ken was challenged to an after-dinner fencing duel by ursine Oli. “I knew I had to fight or he’d have killed me,” Ken later recalled. “So I brought the sword down on him and tore open his shirt. Oliver looked down at his bloodied chest, looked up at me and smiled. ‘Excellent!’ he roared!” In later life, Reed became a hazard on the talk show circuit, turning up on Michael Aspel with a pint of gin and orange, and offering to show Des O’Connor the tattoo on his ‘mighty mallet’. He died in a pub in Malta while arm-wrestling sailors. I think it’s what he’d have wanted.
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