He missed a ferry from Dublin to Liverpool a few years ago, enraged he chartered a helicopter and was waiting at the other side to give a bollicking to the captain, maybe apocryphal but I like it.
My doctor has been on at me to cut down drinking. From what I can gather, I drink nowhere near as much as what Pete did and he lived to 81. Is it all a conspiracy to make me live a long and miserable life? Of his films, there's a real strange one where he's a director who plays all sorts of nasty tricks to get the right scenes such as playing a real sex scene to the parents of the actress just to get a shot of her crying real tears. Don't know what it's called but enjoyed that one.
Although it was his mother, Connie, who instilled in O'Toole a strong sense of literature, by far the biggest influence in his young life was his father, Patrick, a bookie who was often drunk. One day, Patrick stood his young son up on the mantelpiece and said: "Jump, boy. I'll catch you. Trust me." When O'Toole jumped, his father withdrew his arms, leaving the boy splattered on the hard stone floor. The lesson, said his father, was "never trust any bastard". FFS
He stopped in the '70's though, all his pals are long dead. I'm cutting right down in the New Year myself, off the smokes too, getting on.
Give up the ***s, it's surprisingly easy after about 3 weeks but not the drink, you've got to have some pleasures in life. Take up metal detecting. That's my advice.
