The passing away of Peter O’ Toole along with the recent death of Oliver Reed and before them George Best, Richard Harris and Richard Burton means as a nation we are seriously short of hell-raisers.
Who is now to carry the flag for booze-crazed roisterers? Men who thought nothing of drinking so far to excess that they would end up in a different country of a morning.
In my own time I have known one or two journalists who took things a bit farther than most.
Happy days when they would ring their news desks and casually ask their bosses where they were. World-weary news editors would play the game and ask them to look out of the window and tell them to report what they could see.
A crooked spire would mean they were in Chesterfield, a large spinning wheel, Blackpool, and so on.
My favourite of this genre was a former colleague who, having woken up in the cells of a Wakefield police station, calmly enquired of his boss whether he should stay and cover the cases at magistrates’ courts that day – including his own.
But Robert Crampton in The Times reminds me of an interesting take on this kind of behaviour.
Why did these screen stars with their charisma, wonderful good looks, dashing personalities, riches and fame, not, of an evening, call a halt and go home with one of the many gorgeous young women who attended upon them?
He calls it a ‘weird’ decision and the ‘wrong’ one.
I am not so sure.
Few things in life, in my opinion, are as much pleasure as a night out with the boys when everyone is on good form and the beer is flowing.
As someone who lived the life of a ‘married’ bachelor for years I still vividly recall a night out in Birkby. We were all having a great time but I knew my wife was picking me up and I would have to go home and leave the party.
Sure enough she arrived and all my chums sat there making ‘under the thumb’ gestures and delighting in my discomfort.
They knew the reality and I left with as good grace as I could muster.
But the truth is a hard core of men prefer to party till they drop however delightful their wives’ company.
Their love of drink and male company conquers all other instincts.
And if the good Lord created you that way there is precious little you can do about it.
