The utter vileness of Richard Harris

Brawling, boozing and womanising, those vaunted hell-raisers of the 1960s – Peter O’Toole, Oliver Reed, Richard Burton and, of course, Richard Harris – were all frightful bores. Because their professional lives involved dressing up and wearing mascara and silly wigs, it was essential for them to show what he-men they were: how hard. Like Stanley Baker (another one), Harris boasted to columnists: ‘I’ve got great contacts with the underworld,’ especially the Krays. He never had anything to say about the artistic merits or meaning of any of his films. His stories were exclusively about his prowess as a bully. Crushing an apple, he typically said to one of his directors: ‘If you don’t get out of this room right now, this is what I’ll do to your skull.’

Joe Jackson’s book is a catalogue of Harris’s ‘screaming matches’ with everybody from producers to chauffeurs. If one of the studio drivers ‘failed to open the car door fast enough’ Harris would start kicking off and creating a scene.