Drinks with Peter O’Toole
SIR: I adored Annabel Leventon’s fascinating piece about working with Peter O’Toole (September issue). However, I was puzzled by her suggestion that following having his pancreas removed, the great actor was told that he ‘would die if he touched another drop’ – thereby implying that he never drank again.
While I do not doubt that he did not imbibe during the run of Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell, anyone present at the Oldie lunches he attended in the last years of his life can attest that he drank then.
In fact, I enjoyed many drinks with him, post-lunch, at Simpson’s in the Strand. On one memorable occasion, we ended up in the nearby Coal Hole pub, on the Strand, where we were joined by Richard Harris, wearing slippers, as he had just popped down from the suite in the Savoy, where he lived.
I like to imagine that Harris also had his dressing-gown on, but I think I imagined that, as I was in Barry Cryer’s words ‘feeling no pain’.
Peter was a fabulous
