Walk on the wild side

A good title works wonders at the Edinburgh Fringe. Oliver Reed: Wild Thing (Gilded Balloon) has a simple and succinct name that promises excitement, drama and celebrity gossip. And it delivers. Mike Davis and Bob Crouch’s exhilarating monologue races through the chief highlights of Oliver Reed’s career. Showmanship ran in his veins. On his father’s side, he was the grandson of Herbert Beerbohm Tree, the founder of Rada. But the connection was illegitimate. Reed’s grandmother had six children with Tree although they never married. Her surname, she claimed, was a facetious comment on the relationship. ‘I’m a frail Reed in the shadow of a mighty Tree.’

Young Ollie was packed off to boarding school where everyone spoke in posh ‘quack-quack’ accents. He was a keen athlete, a reluctant bully and a hopeless scholar. ‘I wore my dunce’s cap like a crown.’ At 17, he discovered Soho. After getting into a fight at a strip club, he was hired as a bouncer.