Oliver Reed

Oliver Reed (13 February 1938 – 2 May 1999) was an English actor known for his burly screen presence. He famously appeared on TV chat shows and other live TV occasions extremely drunk. Despite attempts to control his booze intake, Oliver Reed was a dick, Ted!

Oliver Reed was famous for his excessive drinking, which fitted in with the "social" attitude of many rugby teams in the 1960s and 1970s, and there are numerous anecdotes such as Reed and 36 friends drinking, in an evening, 60 gallons of beer, 32 bottles of Scotch, 17 bottles of gin, four crates of wine and one bottle of Babycham. He subsequently revised the story, claiming he drank 106 pints of beer on a 2-day binge before marrying Josephine; "The event that was reported actually took place during an arm-wrestling competition in Guernsey about 15 years ago, it was highly exaggerated." Steve McQueen told the story that in 1973 he had flown to the UK to discuss a film project with Reed and suggested the pair go to a nightclub in London. This led to a marathon pub crawl during which Reed threw up on McQueen. Reed's face had been carved up ten years previously during a 1963 bar fight after which he received 63 stitches and was in danger of having his film career cut short in his 20s.

Reed was often irritated that his appearances on TV chat shows concentrated on his drinking feats, rather than his latest film. David Letterman cut to a commercial when it appeared Reed might get violent after being asked too many questions about his drinking. He was held partly responsible for the demise of BBC1's Sin on Saturday after some typically forthright comments on the subject of lust, the sin featured on the first programme. The show had many other problems and a fellow guest revealed that Reed recognised this when he arrived and had to be virtually dragged in front of the cameras. Near the end of his life he was brought onto some TV shows specifically for his drinking; for example The Word put bottles of drink in his dressing room so he could be secretly filmed getting drunk. He was forced to leave the set of the Channel 4 television discussion programme After Dark after arriving drunk and attempting to kiss feminist writer Kate Millett, uttering the memorable phrase "give us a kiss, big tits". He was seemingly very drunk on the Michael Aspel chat show, to many highly entertaining, to others a waste of a great acting talent. However, author Cliff Goodwin, in his biography of Reed titled Evil Spirits, offers the theory that Reed was not always as drunk on chat shows as he appeared to be, but rather was acting the part of an uncontrollably sodden former star to liven things up, at the producers' behests.

In 1987 Reed became seriously ill with kidney problems as a result of his alcoholism, and had to completely stop drinking for a year.

In later years, Reed could often be seen quietly drinking with his wife Josephine Burge, at the bar of the White Horse Hotel in the High Street in Dorking, Surrey, not far from his home in Oakwoodhill. He had sold his larger house, 'Broome Hall', between the villages of Coldharbour and Ockley some years earlier.