How I choked Peter O'Toole - and punched Pinter's lights out: Brian Blessed tells all about his love-hate relationship with the actor and how a wrestling match sealed their friendship 

• Brian Blessed described a violent incident involving actor Peter O'Toole
• Carpets, chairs, tables were flung all over the place in a country house 
• The pair had a love-hate relationship which stretched over 50 years 

By Brian Blessed For The Daily Mail

Published: 18:23 EST, 27 September 2015 | Updated: 09:42 EST, 28 September 2015

The post-production party for cast and crew was at a grand old country house full of antiques just outside Dublin. Bagpipes were playing when the doors were flung open and in walked the star of the film — Peter O’Toole, actor supreme and hellraiser extraordinaire, with a gang of cronies. He was obviously very drunk, far from an unusual O’Toole condition.

He grabbed the pipes and to everyone’s astonishment played them brilliantly. Was there no end to this amazing man’s talent? After huge applause, he bowed … and threw the instrument straight through a glass window.

It was the signal for mayhem. Carpets, chairs, tables were flung all over the place. Tapestries were torn off the walls, and paintings, too. The producer, with the distraught old lord who owned the house by his side, begged me to do something.

I stepped forward. ‘STOP THIS, O’TOOLE!’ I boomed in the unmistakeable deep bass Blessed voice. He turned and glared, his eyes wide and bloodshot. ‘Stop this now, do you hear me?’

I stepped forward. ‘STOP THIS, O’TOOLE!’ I boomed in the unmistakeable deep bass Blessed voice. He turned and glared, his eyes wide and bloodshot. ‘Stop this now, do you hear me?’

He raised his leg to knee me, and froze like a statue. ‘You try that, Peter,’ I continued, ‘and I promise you won’t be able to walk for months. You can kiss your acting career goodbye.’

‘You are a miserable f****r, Blessed,’ he rasped and walked out.

I spent the next few hours comforting the owner and trying to comprehend how such a great actor and wonderful human being could turn into such a violent monster. I had been his friend since I was in drama school, and I seemed to be one of the few people able to keep him in order.

That went back to the very first time I met him — at a party in the mid-1950s where I’d memorably just punched Harold Pinter’s lights out. No long dramatic pauses as in his plays. Wham! He got one right on the side of the jaw.

I was a drama student at the Old Vic theatre school in Bristol and we were celebrating the opening night of Pinter’s very first play in the university drama studio. Though he was then an unknown, he could be extremely rough when ‘refreshed’ and was wandering round threatening to hit everyone. Because I was a big lad and I’d boxed in my youth, my friends were looking to me for protection.

Pinter came up to me and said menacingly: ‘You must be the hard man everyone’s talking about.’ Then he took a swing.

Now, Pinter was without doubt a great dramatist — the heaviest of them all — but his punches were more Gilbert & Sullivan. I dodged a couple, then let go a quick left hook, which sent him tumbling backwards.

O’Toole — a leading actor at the Old Vic Theatre — was also at the party. (Of course he was! He could smell a booze-up at a thousand paces. Unlike me: I don’t touch alcohol.) He rushed up, helped Pinter to his feet and led him away, turning to give me a ‘did you really do that?’ look.

It was the start of a friendship that lasted more than 50 years, though throughout that time I both loved and loathed him. By far the best actor of his generation, he was also often moronic, bumptious, insulting and violent, a complete pain in the backside — especially when his head was inside a bottle. He was like Lord Byron with a knuckle-duster — mad, bad and dangerous to know — as I discovered after he saw me acting in a student play.

O’Toole was an extraordinary actor, brimming with confidence and ability and very brave, if unorthodox

He was gushing with praise for my performance and ‘its fragility, love’, but within minutes had switched and was picking a fight with me. We were almost eyeball to eyeball as he said menacingly: ‘I’m going to the gym later to do a few strength tests. Why don’t you come along?’

‘I’d be delighted,’ I said. ‘You’re going to sweat a bit,’ he shot back, ‘You scared?’

‘Not of you, no!’ I replied.

At the gym, I took on him and the gang of cronies and sycophants he always went around with — and slaughtered the lot of them at bench-pressing, pull-ups and abdominal crunches.

Foolishly he challenged me to a bout of wrestling, something I’d been proficient at since I was young. About two minutes in, I got him in a choke-hold. ‘I can’t breathe!’ he gasped.

‘That’s the idea, Pete!’ I said. It was the first time I’d called him Pete. ‘One to me. Want to go again?’

‘No way, love! My God, you’re a rough bastard.’ From then on, we were friends. It was as though I’d passed some initiation ceremony.

The macho challenges continued, which was fine by me. O’Toole’s acting style was to play on the fragile side of his nature, which is why off stage he always felt the need to act tough, particularly with a physically heavyweight person like me.

We’d run for miles, just the two of us — sometimes stark naked, for a laugh — and by God could he run. He was built like a gazelle! He might even have got the better of me, had he not smoked a pack-and-a-half of cigarettes every day.

O’Toole was an extraordinary actor, brimming with confidence and ability and very brave, if unorthodox.

I remember watching him as Jimmy Porter in Look Back In Anger when he saw me in the front row, jumped off the stage and sat down next to me for a chat.

Brian Blessed stars alongside his daughter Rosalind in the Guildford Shakespeare Company production

‘You enjoying it, love?’ he asked, ever so nonchalantly. ‘This next bit’s good. Bit heavy going, don’t you think? How’re you keeping?’

Then he stood up and jumped straight back on to the stage — 4ft up from a standing start!

He was just as athletic when it came to drinking. He was constantly being thrown into the cells by police. The moment he left the theatre he and his cronies — who weren’t there to keep him out of trouble but to get him into it — would be off terrorising ordinary people.

They destroyed restaurants and bars, and because his gang were generally well-off students from the United States, they paid for the damage with pocketfuls of cash. They’d just slap it down on a table — if they could find one that hadn’t been smashed.

‘How much do you want? A hundred pounds? OK, here you go.’

O’Toole would usually be on his knees, vomiting. I once saw him in the middle of a main street in Bristol waving his arms trying to stop all the buses, while covered from head to toe in his own sick.

This man, blessed by God with an amazing talent, was p***ing it up against the wall, and that’s what made me hate his guts sometimes.

Richard Harris, Oliver Reed and Richard Burton were notorious for their exploits — but they didn’t compare with O’Toole. They merely drank a lot, threw a few punches and got on everyone’s nerves. When it came to hellraising, O’Toole was the only genuine article.

The other three made a lot of threats — they’d throw stones and chuck spears at the castle. O’Toole would pull down the drawbridge, charge in screaming and start swinging from the flaming chandeliers!

I kept in touch with O’Toole after we left Bristol and I got my break playing PC ‘Fancy’ Smith in Z Cars.

We even made a couple of films together. When I arrived on one set, he gleefully told me he had spent the night in the cells after a wild pub fight. He also tried to wrestle me, to see if I could still beat him physically.

I quickly had him on his back, with a vice-like grip. Then I saw the director, J. Lee Thompson, watching us and clearly thinking: ‘Why the hell have I employed this guy Blessed? He’s worse than O’Toole.’

Some years later, we were in Rome filming the musical The Man Of La Mancha, in which Peter was a mesmerising Don Quixote. I was having a quiet dinner in a restaurant with other actors when he burst in with three minders. He was so drunk, breaking glasses, pouring wine over the table and threatening everyone, that I got up to leave.

'I kept in touch with O’Toole after we left Bristol and I got my break playing PC ‘Fancy’ Smith in Z Cars'. Pictured is O'Toole as Lawrence of Arabia

‘You are bloody going nowhere!’ O’Toole screamed, instructing his tough guys to bar my way. ‘Peter,’ I said quietly, ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’ll flatten these silly b****rs and then I’ll kick your teeth down your throat.’

After a pause, he waved his hand, his torpedoes moved out of my way and I left.

The next time our paths crossed was during the making of the BBC series I, Claudius, in which his then wife, the beautiful Welsh actress Sian Phillips, was playing my screen wife.

One morning she told me she’d been up all night with Peter. ‘I thought he was going to die, Brian. His body just broke down. The doctors say that if he even has a drop of alcohol it might kill him.’ I suggested she brought him in so I could cheer him up, and he arrived looking terrible. ‘Hello, Brian, you big rough bastard,’ he said.

‘Get in here,’ I replied, ‘And don’t go messing up our rehearsals, otherwise I’ll chin you!’ Over the next few days, I laid into Peter to keep him awake and alert. Everyone else was so respectful and considerate, but it was no use. O’Toole needed buckets of abuse. He needed to laugh.

‘Lawrence of Arabia?’ I’d say, recalling his most famous role. ‘You look more like Catherine of Aragon. You know nothing about acting, O’Toole. I have never seen a more untalented human being. You’ve got no face, no voice. Look at you there, all shrivelled up!’

It did the trick. Put some much-needed colour in his cheeks! That was back in the mid-Seventies and he was still alive and kicking 30 years later.

We had plenty of ups and downs. There was the time he rang out of the blue: ‘I’m doing Macbeth, Brian, at the Old Vic in London, and I want you to be Banquo. I’m shaking with excitement, love.’

‘Lawrence of Arabia?’ I’d say, recalling his most famous role. ‘You look more like Catherine of Aragon'

I was not keen. ‘Honestly, Peter,’ I said, ‘I don’t want to work with someone who behaves like you do. I am ashamed of you as an artist.

‘Actors look after their bodies, they study and study to try and better themselves. Yet you have a God-given talent and all you do is p**s on it.’

I went to his home in Hampstead to tell him to his face what I thought of him. ‘You’re either off your face, angry or violent,’ I raged. ‘You bully and manipulate people. You’re marvellous for a time, and then you’re ugly once again.’

While I was saying this, I dragged him all over his house by his shirt. I bounced him off the walls. ‘You’re a good-for-nothing, O’Toole. That’s what I’ve come to tell you!’ He was crying his eyes out.

‘Brian, I love you. You’re the only person who makes any sense. You’re the only person who fazes me. Please play Banquo for me. I must walk on that stage with you by my side.’

The great Peter O’Toole was begging me, but I turned him down. I felt no remorse. Telling him the truth was something I should have done 20 years earlier.

When I arrived home, my wife said he’d been on the phone, weeping. ‘He said you beat him up! What on earth have you been doing, Brian? I’m worried. The man is distraught.’

Peter and I talked again that evening and, finally succumbing to that Irish charm, I agreed to play Banquo. Sadly, the production was a disaster and he was ridiculed.

The last time I saw him was in 2009. I was walking down Wardour Street in Soho and realised I was being sworn at. ‘Blessed, over here!’

Standing in the road was O’Toole, by now in his late 70s, arms in the air, looking as though he’d been dragged through a hedge backwards. ‘Come here and give me a hug,’ he shouted, ‘you big lovely f****r! Then I’m going to knock you out!’ He threw a gentle punch and I grabbed him,

lifted him into the air, slowly lowered him on to the pavement and pinned him.

‘Submit?’ I said as taxi drivers and tourists stared. ‘Of course I submit. I can’t move!’

With that, I picked him up, dusted him off, gave him a big hug and a kiss — and away he went to the Groucho Club, to receive an award. Before he turned the corner, he gestured as if to say: ‘I’ll call you.’ He never did, nor I him — and that’s the last time we saw each other. It had been just like the old days: profane, confrontational and fun.

Professionally, when Peter O’Toole was good he was, in my opinion, the best there ever was. Better than all the great actors. But if he messed up, which he did occasionally, he did so majestically.

I miss him dreadfully. With his death in 2013, a great light went out on this planet. We shall never see his like again.

MacDeath: The most catastrophic and courageous show I've ever witnessed 

When I arrived for my first rehearsal as Banquo in Peter O’Toole’s production of Macbeth at the Old Vic, London, in 1980, it was apparent that an epic disaster was in the making.

He’d already fired several directors, sacked the wardrobe four times, got rid of this, got rid of that. He’d brought in Bryan Forbes as director, who had never directed for the stage before, and Forbes had brought with him the set from The Slipper And The Rose, a Cinderella movie he’d made several years before.

The film set from a romantic musical for one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies?

‘The set is ridiculous. Get rid of it, Peter. It’s WRONG!’ I lambasted him, but his eyes were twitching and he didn’t seem to know where he was.

I told him about a student Macbeth I’d once seen with just some white curtains as a backdrop and no props. It had been amazing — and over in two hours rather than the four hours his was dragging on for.

But he was adamant. ‘This is what I want.’ So the silly sod kept the set.

'When I arrived for my first rehearsal as Banquo in Peter O’Toole’s production of Macbeth at the Old Vic, London, in 1980, it was apparent that an epic disaster was in the making'

Come the first night I didn’t even have a costume. ‘There are none,’ I was told. ‘O’Toole’s sacked the entire department again!’ I went into the storeroom, and picked out some chainmail, boots and a sword.

Peter had painted his dressing room bright flaming red. I walked in and, once my eyes had recovered, I said: ‘If I smell drink on you or see you’ve been taking drugs, I will walk out.’ I don’t think he was on drugs at the time, but he was certainly out of his mind with fear.

A quarter of an hour before curtain up, I found Bryan Forbes standing outside Peter’s dressing room knocking back triple brandies. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ he bleated.

‘Peter’s going to go on half-naked — in red tights, parachute boots and nothing else. Please talk to him. You’re the only one he’ll listen to. It’s going to be a disaster. People are here from all over the world. This could finish him!’

Peter, naked to the waist, was almost skeletal, and across his stomach was this huge scar from an operation. There had been rumours he’d had cancer. Now here was the visible evidence a tumour had been cut out.

‘Pete,’ I said, ‘when you go on like that, the audience will say, “Ah, so he did have cancer!” and that’s all they’ll talk about.’ Then I looked at him closely — and saw that he’d painted diamonds on his eyes! For Macbeth!

Right, I told him, all that’s coming off. And you need a beard, like the one you had as Henry II in The Lion In Winter.

‘I don’t want a beard,’ he whined. ‘I want my face as it is now!’

‘But you’ll look a prat. When I walk on alongside you, it’ll be like Laurel and Hardy. I’ve got some chainmail here, and a red garment to cover your body and match your tights. Put that on. You’ll look splendid, like a warrior.’

'Peter O’Toole’s production of Macbeth at the Old Vic, London, in 1980, it was apparent that an epic disaster was in the making'. Peter O'Toole pictured as Lawrence of Arabia, his most successful role

He gave in. ‘OK, Brian,’ he heaved. He was already exhausted, emotionally and physically. He had said to me previously that, when the curtain went up, he and I would be waiting for the line: ‘A drum, a drum, Macbeth doth come . . .’ ‘And then you and I will walk on to that stage, and the West End will stand still. You and me, mate, together as Macbeth and Banquo.’

When that moment came, we were still in his dressing room. That’s when he really panicked: ‘I can’t go on, Brian. I can’t do it.’ I dragged him down the corridor and threw him on that bloody stage — to be greeted by an ominous silence. The shock of how he looked, despite my efforts, unnerved the audience.

And so the disaster unfolded. He’d had a bath put onstage filled to the brim with fake blood. After he killed Duncan, Macbeth got in the bath and almost drowned. When he got out, there was blood all over the stage; actors came on, slipped and went flying. This brought the house down — with laughter.

The Press murdered him. They knew he was out of his mind, yet they all jumped on him and butchered him. ‘MacDeath,’ screamed one typical headline. The day after, the house was packed. Everyone had come to see him suffer. When I got to my dressing room, Peter was on his knees. The veins were sticking out of his head, and I stood in front of him gently pushing them back into his skull — a sight I still find painful to recall.

‘I can’t take it any more,’ he sobbed. I felt he was on the brink of death. So I picked him up, put my arms around him and kissed him on the lips and on both eyes and stroked his head. I rocked him back and forth in my arms gently for half an hour and sang a lullaby.

‘Peter,’ I said, ‘I am going down on to the stage and will tell the audience to go home, and that you are not going to play this role again.’

‘Oh, no, you can’t,’ he pleaded. As I walked towards the stage, he followed me on all fours, like some demented ape, gripping me and saying: ‘I have to go on, Brian, please let me go on. If I don’t, I will die.’

He eventually went on, and the show lasted almost five hours. I stood at the side, ready to collect him when he came off. He had no voice, nothing. There was no life in him.

But he went on to complete that run. The mark of a man, it is always said, is that he completes the job, and O’Toole completed the job. Never in my life have I witnessed such courage.

• Extracted from Absolute Pandemonium by Brian Blessed, published by Sidgwick & Jackson on October 8, price£20. Copyright Brian Blessed. To order a copy for £14, visit mailbookshop.co.uk or call 0808272 0808. Discount available until October 3rd, p&p free 

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