Oliver Reed 'I developed an obsession with Alex based on his lunacy"

one two three everything's good is everybody go to year that's marvelous look at this okay everything's good okay how far can [Music] I I can touch more ready go yeah really yeah okay so when did you first me Alex there was a time in my life uh that I recognized very few things except one of the observations that Oscar wild made and he said that a man should either feed you amuse you or shock you and there is a another friend of mine who runs a restaurant very parti restaurant called Harvey near some common common and uh he's got that in the front of his menu and I think that if I had to talk of purpose about Alex Higgins it would be that he does one of the three he certainly amuses me and he certainly entertains me I remember him cooking soup once down in a farmhouse that I had done in s and uh he was cooking pea soup with ham in it because he had this great sense of sentimentality that a lot of the Irish have and uh so was trying to copy his grandmother or grandfather's cooking um I think I think that he made the mistake I'm not sure that the grandparents made the mistake but then having known Alex for as much as I I met Alex uh I I bought this big huge house down uh on the SAR Sussex borders years ago and it was owned by uh the white fathers of Africa and previous to them ever arriving there the uh the Canadian Army were there and I bought bought it for what was a very cheap price in those days and then spent whatever I was allowed to have in my pocket my brother's my manager and Alex would know about this so I spent a 40 and all of a sudden uh Desi a mad as uh cab driver who had been working out and I think probably his wife was being courted by Alex Higgins turned up and I saw what I assumed to be uh this huge great Wine Bar walking down the corridor doing this at 108 M an hour with this huge great papia masche covered wine bottle he then stuck it on my new snooker table and then began to fire balls into it in all sorts of different directions or from different directions and I watched him for a bit and I had just I used to live in this uh in this we could never get the bedrooms right and so I lived in the billiard room for S years and then eventually once we got all the bedrooms right we moved upstairs and then we bought a bilard table into the billiard room and then Alex appeared and I didn't know him from Adam I mean you know 15 16 17 years ago the the cover of Television W wasn't as purposeful as it is nowadays so nobody made a Tiddly wink into a champion and the little yobs like Davis and white and Higgins and the rest of those Choppers from Canada they're not big enough to chop down a tree suddenly turned up and they made very cheap visual television and so these anti-heroes became popular and amongst those like a great white thrush through the burnest bush came Higgins who was not opposed to anything that delighted him in exactly the same way that art is not opposed to that which Delights the painter whether or not you put on Vermillion blue or or Alabaster brown or yellow or green you build a montage of color and that is what Higgins has done in his life beyond that is a mere pink is that what attracts you I haven't finished yet thank you for don't interrupt me remember I told you this you got to wait till somebody finish otherwise the editor can't cut across okay then you'll learn that with experience and so so what happened then I developed an obscure friendship with this fellow that was based upon his lunacy based upon the very first observation of wild you've got to Shu them amuse them or feed them now your turn okay when you first met him you had you heard of him before you'd heard of him from watch TV sir when I first met Alex and having seen him come down with this huge great vas which all the colored balls went in I suddenly started thinking of the Hustler and I was thinking of Paul Newman and uh the other fellow that I worked on once and sting to have forgotten his name but and I suddenly thought wow I could make this little jumping C monk a lot of money but didn't know him 17 years ago because nobody had seen him little on me I was interested in crumping in those days not neurotic jumping balls and uh so I sent him after this where he gave me 26 black St and I don't think I even scored one and he won we game for 20 which to me is a fortune especially when I don't game upon things which I do not have the skill about then uh then that was it so afterwards we went into the study and had a few uh whiskies and said to him do you know I could make you a lot of money and harac being hcan how because he's such a mean bastard he really is a mean bastard except that he gave me an Overcoat for my birthday last year in Dublin this year in Dublin and a box of chocolates and I'm sure that he got the Overcoat of a very great friend of his who supplies all his clothes in Dublin and I wished I could give him the opportunity I think probably within the nature of this program or this video you'll tell him but who was very sweet so Alex probably got off him and he probably got one of his Birds to pay for the box of chocolates which incidentally made me sick and anyway after Huracan had left the table I said we can make a lot of money and uh he said but people will recognize me and I thought there is the rub because I didn't know but I could tell for that small moment and so I immediately whipped Off the Wall um a silk print of Two Fellas in Perry wigs playing a for of billiards in France and shading it from the Shadow and I thought there is somebody that I must believe in and then after that I have and then after that then everything has become so much alive for his idiocy and so when I find people trying to destruct him I find that unsavory and I find therefore I'll suddenly hop off my my bike and go up the coupe and uh find out you know who's got the handle bars on and who's you know chained it up and so I've done that every now and then to say listen get out of uh sod ey and come over and and stay with me for a bit uh assuming idealistically that that would be an opportunity that I would never deny myself again except that it becomes a great a great sense of the bizarre do you understand I do you you're talking about some of his uh enemies in the Press who uh find him was a fair game and you've offered him a sanctuary from that from time to time haven't you yes yeah how do you how do you feel about this press coverage because he's a man of the public eye isn't he so maybe in some way he deserves to be

Channel: JoeMoonblue

Views: 176,319

Keywords: Oliver Reed (TV Actor), joemoonblue, alex hurricane higgins, im no angel, Theatre (TV Genre)

Id: NzSbgiCKKjc

Length: 9min 55sec (595 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 12 2012