The author clearly loves the subjects of this book, but though I enjoyed it, I started to wonder if their allure would hold in this day and age. The sprightly smash 'n dash of the prose so wonderfully captures the wanton belligerence of both bingeing and stardom you almost feel the guys themselves are telling the tales (and moaning and toasting all the while. People seem to knock this book for culling from too many already published biographies, but the author did interview a bunch of people as well, including one of my favorite directors of all time, Richard Lester.

The exception being the spoilt, demanding, drunken Elizabeth Taylor who screwed Richard Burton, in every sense, till the end of their two marriages.Also, less than a month ago, I saw a brief interview with the old Richard Harris in which the alcoholic said he didn’t regret even one drop of what he’d done in his life. Perhaps, though, there’s a kind of antique dignity in the simple refusal to justify one’s self upon demand. Peter O’Toole’s drinking almost put him in the grave before his 43rd birthday, and Oliver Reed ended up dying prematurely. As old Akbar of Afghanistan said "the man on hashish will be laughing and joking with you at the end of the night- the drunkard on wine will maybe even end up trying to kill you. We have updated our Privacy Policy, effective June 29, 2020, to clarify how we collect and process your personal data.

On the surface it’s a roughly chronological group biography, but really it’s an anthology of anecdotes. If you remember the bygone times when people had fun , without giving a s*** about what the rest of the world thought , then this is the book for you . Their mercurial acting talent and love from the press and the public allowed them to get away with the kind of behaviour that today’s film stars could scarcely dream of. And so they did: Burton, burned out at the heartbreakingly early age of 58; Reed in a farcical arm-wrestling bout at 61; Harris unrepentant as a noble ruin at 72. Their names are included up there with the acting greats and these boys spent quite a bit of time behaving badly.I'd also like to see Castaway as the trailers look like an art film but is hard to find on DVD in the USA.

And the horrors of cold turkey – “like ants were crawling under the skin” – when you end up in jail. Hellraisers” wants only to be a rowdy collection of greatest hits, and it lives up to that fun-loving ambition. He had this operation in the '70s, where most of his stomach was removed because of his excessive drinking. Anyone familiar with the drinking life knows how crucial company can be -- an uncritical audience for and source of stories and companionship that demands no more than that you stand your round. And so on a Saturday night “the effect of a week’s monotonous graft in the factory was swilled out of your system in a burst of goodwill”.There is a slight variation where Person X remembers it and regrets it, but this variation doesn't occur often. This book was funny, interesting and entertaining and can make you feel as though you yourself are a bit boring! Books on hellraisers often focus on “creatives” such as Robert Sellers’ Hollywood Hellraisers: the Life and inebriated times of [actors] Burton, Harris, Reed and O’Toole. I feel like I read one of the stories twice when Oliver Reed put perfume into someones drink and made them sick.