Hellraisers

 

I'm reading a book at the moment called "Hellraiser's", it's a birthday gift from my Son who, I reckon, fancies himself as a bit of a "player" in this regard. Anyway, it's about four British actors who, back in the 50s thru 80s were, as the name suggests, rather fond of raising a bit of hell. The four people under scrutiny are, Oliver Reed, Peter O'Toole, Richard Harris and Richard Burton all well known film and stage actors in their time and well known for being (very) partial to the odd snifter of booze or worse. 

It's an interesting book, starting with the early (poor) incarnations of these film stars, how they scraped a living doing odd jobs and eating cold baked beans while searching for their "break", it then follows them through the early years of success, false starts and broken relationships through to the full blown coke sniffing years of Hollywood scale excess and debauchery. Of course it ends up exactly where you'd expect it to, old age, liver failure and early death! Kind of sad when you think about it, the candle that burns twice as bright etc. What I really wanted to know at the end, was whether there was regret, it's not clear and with all of the mythology surrounding these guys I doubt we ever will.

One of the strangest things you realise when reading the book is the following that these blokes had, an almost God like reverence from ordinary people, admiration for the (often pathetically juvenile and anti-social) alcohol and drug based exploits they had, an adoration that exceeds the normal blokeish response to this kind of thing. I did discover that, in the case of Oliver Reed, there's even a tribute pub crawl around Wimbledon (where he used to live) of eight pubs and a celebratory poster to go with it (see picture above!) - it's a strange old world.