noterad.com

THE BBC CONVENIENTLY FORGETS TO MENTION HIS SEXUALITY. THAT IS WRONG AND REWRITES THE MANS LIFE. HIS LONG TERM PARTNER GRAHAM CURNOW DIED IN 1997. WOULD THAT BE SO HARD FOR THEM TO ADMIT?????

Britt Ekland, actor and singer, wrote: “Just heard my wonderful friend, co writer and director Victor Spinetti died. Am devastated to have lost a true acting genius.”

Welsh actor Sian Phillips told BBC Wales she was shocked and saddened, adding: “He was such a force of joy and vitality. When one saw him across a crowded room, one couldn’t wait to get together with him and have a chat and a catch-up.”

Barbara Windsor, his co-star in the West End stage play Oh! What a Lovely War which transferred to Broadway and a lifelong friend, had visited Spinetti last Thursday.

“We were very close. He was another of my great friends from that era. He was such a great man,” she said.

“We just chatted and chatted and talked about old things. But he said, ‘let’s not talk about all that, let’s talk about the future’.

“What he was trying to say was that everything was happy in his room. I was happy to see him. He didn’t look ill. He looked great. He was swearing a lot, like that would get rid of the illness, and we just laughed.”

Talking to Victor Spinetti is like being invited to the best party, one where the guest of honour takes you to one side, sits you down and promises to tell you a little story.

Only his stories aren’t little and the names he drops into idle conversation are, frankly, big enough to bounce.

Here’s his starter for 10 – Princess Margaret.

In his new memoir, the Welsh actor claims that the princess had a life full of secrets.

Not only does he gush about her beauty, he says the princess engaged in extra-marital behaviour and enjoyed one-night stands in London hotels.

Although he confessed to me that the “one great love” of his life was his partner Graham Curnow – “we shared a life but we didn’t go in for possessiveness or any of that other nonsense and the sleeping together thing didn’t really work” – he writes in his autobiography how he was “taken up for a while” by her, after she saw him in a play in 1969, when she was still married to Lord Snowdon.

He describes a dinner date with the princess at a London hotel, where she told him of her secret flings.

He writes, “She loosened her fur coat, letting it drop to the floor, sure that someone would pick it up. After the meal she said she would ask the manager to let her look through the rooms.

“When asked if she had much experience of hotel rooms, she replied, ‘Only for one-night stands’.”

The book also tells how Margaret enraged Hollywood legend Elizabeth Taylor by ignoring her at a post-premiere party and flirting with her husband, Richard Burton.

Spinetti recalls, “She started monopolising Richard. The only time she included Elizabeth was when she looked over at a ring she was wearing and said, ‘What a huge diamond! How vulgar, but I’d love to wear it’.

READ THE REST HERE.