THE DIGITAL VIKING: EDSBS GUIDE TO SPICY LIVING, VOLUME 9
Your Patron Saint of Spicy Living: Oliver Reed.
Don’t even bother searching Youtube for “Oliver Reed drunk.” You don’t have enough time in your day. Oliver Reed completes the Four Horseman of the Mid-20th Century Alcoholcalypse along with Richard Harris (who discovered Hawaiian tropical drinks and wandered into traffic punching cars,) Richard Burton (two bottles of vodka a day,) and Peter O’Toole, who only avoided making the atrocious movies the others made by staying in the bar even longer than the others did.
Reed was fond of rugby, fighting, arm wrestling, and had a tattoo of an eagle’s claw on his genitals. A journalist once asked him if he drank 104 pints during his second bachelor party, to which he responded, “No, that was in Guernsey a few years ago.” He outdrank Lee Marvin. He appeared constantly drunk on not one, but on a series of British talk shows toward the end of his life, including one where he performed “Wild Thing” with Ned’s Atomic Dustbin. He realized he had a drinking problem where all of us realize these things: when he was lying prone on the baggage conveyor at Galway Airport. He vomited on Steve McQueen after a marathon bender in 1973. He was once pulled naked from a giant goldfish tank while ranting “You can’t touch me! I’m one of the Four Musketeers!”
Whether his life was an accomplishment, a warning in the form of one long incredible bender, or something else entirely, we can’t really say. But instead, let’s just say that it certainly happened, and happened with great vigor. At the very least, stand back and gape in awe at it, especially when you consider the final salvo Reed fired over the bow of good sense in his death:
Reed died of a sudden heart attack[1] during a break from filming Gladiator in Valletta, Malta on 2 May 1999. He was 61 years old and was reported to be heavily intoxicated at the time of his death. Racking up an $866 alcohol bill, Reed had reportedly drunk three bottles of Captain Morgan’s rum, eight bottles of beer and numerous doubles of Famous Grouse whisky. He also beat five much younger Royal Navy sailors at arm wrestling at a bar called “The Pub.” (The owners have since added “Ollie’s Last Pub” to the sign.
We salute you, Oliver Reed. If you hear something stumble, punch a wall, and laugh before vomiting, stumbling, and laughing again in a Wimbledon pub one day, it’s him.
Drink.
Holly: Ommegeddon. Like any real patriot, I was hanging out at Green’s on Ponce over the holiday weekend, and Doug threw this bottle in our basket because it had a mushroom cloud on it: (more…)
