Radio Times Magazine – 21st December, 2002

Posh Nosh Tuesdays ITV1
Name: Richard E. Grant
Age: 45
Education: Waterford Kamhlaba school Swaziland. Gained a BA English degree and performa’s diploma at Capetown University. Emigrated to London in 1982

1985 – Honest, Decent And True: Improvised film about an advertising agency, playing a copywriter called Moonee Livingstone teamed with Adrian Edmondson, which also featured Gary Oldman and Arabella Weir [see Posh Nosh below]. The day after transmission I got a new agent and was subsequently cast in Withnail And I. Arabella Weir meanwhile Fast Show’d forwards, then looked back and penned bestseller “Does My Bum Look Big In This?”

1994 – Hard Times: An opportunity to work with director Peter Barnes and opposite Alan Bates and Beatie Edney. Playing a scrounging scoundrel lounging about in frock coats snogging Beatie in the rain. Highly pleasurable. And paid too.

1996 – Karaoke: Dennis Potter’s swansong [with Cold Lazarus], with 1960’s icons Albert Finney and Julie Christie alongside Anna Chancellor and Safron Burrows. Got adulterous, kicked in the head and finally snogged Julie in the back of a Rolls Royce, with a mouthful of cotton wool and painted-on black eye. Not quite the realisation of my adolescent fantasy of finally meeting the woman who had played Bathsheba Everdene in “Far From The Madding Crowd” and starred in the erotic “Don’t Look Now”. Hard to believe anyone could ever cheat on Julie Christie.

1999 – Trial And Retribution III: I’ve known Linda La Plante for many years and she promised she would write me a part one day: “It’ll fit you like a glove” – hence my role as a murderous psychopath suffering acute manic depression. Worst moment was having to throw a bag full of maggots over Kate Buffery’s head. No faking. Terrible stench. Very real reaction. David Hayman [Detective Superintendent Michael Walker] is a really generous but highly critical taskmaster who ups the acting ante in best possible way. Exhilarating.

1999-2000 – The Scarlet Pimpernel: Pitched as an 18th century Batman/Bond figure leading a dual life. Swashing and buckling, swordfighting, riding, chasing and chasing damsels [he did many of his own stunts], ballroom dancing and sinking into bed with Elizabeth McGovern – you’ll understand that this was very hard work.

2003 – Posh Nosh: Fast forward 18 years and Arabella Weir asks me to play her pompous, pretentious, gay husband in her mini nosh-com. Each ten-minute episode features a dish and wine recommendation. Simon and Monty Marchmont equal two parts Johnny and Fanny Craddock, one part Basil and Sybil Fawlty, a dash of Delia, noisette of Nigella, splash of Floyd, lick of Ramsey and a hotchpotch of Stein, Antony Worrall-Rhodes and doodah of anyone else you care to think about that cooks so effortlessly while you sit eating a takeaway. We lost all self-control while filming “our” labrador’s birthday party seated at dinner table, surrounded by dogs – and trainers, just out of sight, cooching and cooing for the hounds to obey “order”.

If you would like to see an larger scan of the article, or download it, then click the image below:

FilmFour Website – December, 2002

By Mark Morris.

Withnail is one of the most abiding – and, with his determination to drink lighter fluid, downright grim – characters in British cinema. In reality, he was based on Bruce Robinson’s friend, would-be actor Vivian MacKerrell. His exploits made Withnail’s pale.

“Everyone keeps saying they were Withnail, and they weren’t,” claims writer/director Bruce Robinson, the only person in the position to know. The incidents that happened to Withnail involved a number of Robinson’s friends: for instance, Mickey Feast, then in the cast of ‘Hair’ and now a respected Shakespearean actor, was Robinson’s companion on the ill-fated trip to the Lakes which became the trip to the country in the film. But Withnail himself has one source. “If there is a person Withnail is based on, it’s Vivian MacKerrell.”

Described by Robinson as “wild, aristocratic and highly educated”, MacKerrell was one of the many people – along with Robinson and Feast – who lived in the Camden house bought by their wealthy drama school friend, composer David Dundas, (who worked as music supervisor on Withnail And I).

According to Robinson, “We had lot of expectations that we would all become film stars, which of course never happened. People were getting married or getting jobs until there was just me and Vivian living in the house. I literally had one light bulb. I guarded it like a Russian prisoner of war.

At night I’d take the light bulb up and put it in the bedroom, and in the day I’d go down and put it in the kitchen and get the oven open, sit there in an overcoat and get warm.”

Robinson’s companion through the worst of it was MacKerrell. The scene where they drink lighter fuel in the film comes from something MacKerrell actually did: he couldn’t see for days afterwards and Robinson suspects it might have caused the throat cancer that eventually killed his friend.

Robinson knew it had to end when MacKerrell returned from a trip home to Scotland armed with bottles of a drink – 200 per cent proof, Robinson claims – that distillery workers made by sticking used whisky filters into spin driers.

Deranged by the drink, Robinson and MacKerrell, armed with a hammer and an artificial leg, smashed one of the walls of their house down. It still took another six months for Robinson and MacKerrell to work up the will go their separate ways.

Although his friends were fascinated by him, MacKerrell’s career – like Withnail’s – was one of overwhelming obscurity, best summed up by the fact that the IMDB spells his name wrong and lists him as an actress. His only screen appearance seems to have been in a 1974 British horror film called Ghost Story (aka Madhouse Mansion), which starred Marianne Faithfull and had Penelope Keith in the cast.

The film’s director Stephen Weeks has fond memories of MacKerrell. “He had a wonderful silk suit made for himself in India, green and beautifully made.

When he got back he went to a ball at the Grosvenor House Hotel, got drunk, threw up over it and then just put it in a drawer and left it. This wonderful suit! About three years later he found it, by which time it was destroyed. That was typical of him really.”

To no one’s surprise, Vivian MacKerrell died young. “The poor bastard’s dead now,” is how Robinson puts it. But the indelible impression he left on his friends provided the basis for British film’s most eloquent drunk.

Mark Morris.

NOTE: To see some pictures of Vivian MacKerrell, click here.

A new write-up and official press release from BBC Online on The Hound Of The Baskervilles can be found here. There’s a small pic with REG in the foreground and links to download the press pack as separate pdf files can also be found on the page.

Some people have inquired about REG’s voiceover work in the new Nivea advertisement that has been screening in the U.K. The advertisement is the one for the men’s products and, apparently, you really have to listen to the voice to see that it IS Richard as he’s really altering it to sound quite different from the wonderful tones we are used to.

The new Argos advertisement is also screening on British TV. In the latest Richard is squashed between two enormous and menacing characters and phoning his personal assistant, Penny, to buy them both presents!

The latest issue of Radio Times (with Elton John is on the cover) has a small reference to Hound of The Baskervilles in “Over Christmas” section. There’s a small picture from the film but not of REG. The back page has sort of gossipy titbits from actress, Lisa Tarbuck. One snippet refers to REG. By all accounts she did some interviews of Hound stars, she states that she’d interviewed Richard before but didn’t get to know him. This time they had a laugh and she beat him at Boggle.

Thanks to Rosemary and Denise for the news.

According to Harvard University’s “Real-Time Testing of Internet Filtering in China” search engine The REG Temple is currently accessible to the people of China. Yes, richard-e-grant.com is one of the sites allowed through the “Great Fire Wall of China” but the old REG Temple (at Grumpyfish.com) is still in doubt and noted as “probably inaccessible”.

So while it might be difficult for those in China to get any “real” news outside of China (almost all news services are banned as well as many mail services such as Yahoo and Hotmail, search engines like Google and ALL sex related websites), it’s still possible for REG’s Chinese fans to get their daily “fix”.

Do it while you can though! Who know’s what’s around the corner?

“It has to be Evian The elixir”

So said REG to a UK Vogue Magazine reporter back in 1995. To read more about the statement click here. Thanks to Jolie for sourcing this one out.

For Australian Regimentals:- According to Maureen, “Let Them Eat Cake” is available at ABC shops at the moment. Richard appears in the third episode for only a few minutes but well worth buying for French and Saunders anyway. He is pretty gorgeous and as usual shows good comedy timing.

And for U.K. fans, REG can currently be heard on television doing the voiceover for Nivea for Men, and The Scarlet Pimpernel has been released as a 3 DVD set exclusive to Woolworths. The set contains the first 3 episodes only. Thanks to Denise and Nikki for the U.K. news.

For those in the U.S. Debbie informs me that Twelfth Night is showing on IFC Friday, December 6th at 8:15 am and 2:15 pm (CST). Ready To Wear (Pret A Porter) is also showing on several HBO stations in the first week of December.