Calm Down Dick, You’re An Arsehole

Most of the papers have today included a tribute to film director, restaurant critic (he bought his own meals) and latter day insurance salesman Michael Winner, who has passed aged 77. While some of the reminiscences are of the kind that are to be expected – his combination of surface rudeness and underlying good humour – the obituaries are notable for what they have left out.

Michael Winner, guv? Er, schtum ... schtum!

Every tribute has included reference to the Death Wish series of films, where Winner directed Charles Bronson on a journey of often violent vigilantism. But Winner also made some less violent and genuinely enjoyable films, too, notably in harness with another larger than life presence, that of Oliver Reed. Ollie was teamed with a young Michael Crawford in The Jokers.

The implausible plot is that the two are brothers (seriously) who intend to steal the Crown Jewels. Winner managed to secure a high grade cast list – rather like a Who’s Who of late 60s UK acting talent – and Dick Clement and Ian la Frenais (The Likely Lads, Porridge, Auf Wiedersehen Pet) to script it. Crawford’s specialities included pretending (pre-troubles) to be an Irish Terrorist (“this is Red George”).

Reed stayed with Winner to make an offbeat World War 2 PoW comedy, Hannibal Brooks. Here, Ollie gets to break out of his prison camp, but insists on taking along with him an elephant he has been caring for at the local zoo. There is no gratuitous violence, but it’s good fun anyway. Both those films are interesting period pieces, but Death Wish probably paid more bills.

But, as Clive James might have said, I digress: the one other item that the obits have missed out occurred in 1994, and one might have thought that the Daily Mail and Sun would have mentioned it, if only because it involved a tedious and unfunny hack who has worked at both titles. I refer, of course, to Richard Littlejohn, and the very first show in his Live And Uncut series for Sky.

Dick had invited two lesbians – and rather obviously so he could indulge his own version of tolerance and understanding. He also had Michael Winner on the panel, and this proved to be his undoing, as Winner handed him his sorry arse on a plate: “shameful exhibition of vulgarity directed towards a minority ... the lesbians have come over with considerable dignity and you’ve come over as an arsehole”.

By this point, Littlejohn may have been regretting (a) doing his show live, (b) inviting Winner, and (c) doing it all in the age when someone, somewhere would be recording the event for posterity. And, despite the Fourth Estate closing ranks and managing not to mention the incident, many will remember Michael Winner as the man who correctly identified an arsehole when he saw one.

Well batted that man!