THE KING GOD BLESS HIM (The Official Michael Winner thread)

[Cohaagen]

For the creation of the above animation I obviously had to use Mr Winner's appearance on Richard Littlejohn Live & Uncut as a fairly close guide. Believe it when I say that I have studied that footage like the Zapruder film. Indeed, the effect of it is something close to hypnotic. The look of serene magnaminity that comes over Winner's face as Linda Bellos praises him for his support is almost Christ-like. He has trampled all comers and knows the universe is on his side. All energies are flowing through him. If he'd have gone into the lotus position at that point he could probably have atomised Littlejohn with a ball of chi, levitated out of there like the Golden Child, and brought about world peace by threatening orbital bombardment.

"I would be quite ferocious and there would be mass death. I would kill muggers, rapists and child killers for a start and then people who park illegally"
-Daily Mirror, March 1st 2003

Still, let's not pretend that Winner is most people's idea of a nice guy. The above quote is testament to that. If he was to get any more right-wing they'd have to smuggle him out to Argentina in a fucking midget sub. That said, his appeal remains enormous for reasons already given, and this thread is for all mongs, opinions, discussions, and virtual love letters to and about this insane, awful man who, for one brief moment in the vacant hours just before Get Stuffed and Bhangra Beat, managed to redeem himself, like Lord Jim, and create a legend.

Tread softly, for this is a holy place.

[Cohaagen]

I've just realised that there was a Winner thread about a month ago. Fuck it.

[mook]

I've just realised that there was a Winner thread about a month ago. Fuck it.

^ nifty shop. anyway, winner needs more threads - the man deserves them. the only three people on the planet greater than winner are me and shatner.

read this and then tell yourself that you love winner:

My former receptionist Zoe had a lovely coat. When she went to get it, the restaurant staff had given it to someone else. Harnal apologised and paid for a replacement. But Zoe had to leave in the cold, find a new coat and be highly inconvenienced. A £50 bunch of flowers wouldn't have been inappropriate. Nor would her meal being removed from my bill. Harnal did none of that. Although, later, when I wrote about it, he suddenly offered freebies galore. Not accepted.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS5S2Dio2_Y

[Cohaagen]

^ nifty shop.

That's no Photoshop, man.

I should probably tell you about the day that photo was taken.

It had got off to a terrible start. Winner had managed to create a spectacle that morning while working on a food review for the Evening Standard. The place was a pricey joint in W1 named "Meatus" which served up something called "The Unknown Cuisine", which I gathered largely consisted of A4 photocopies of some sumptuous dish placed in front of the diner in a post-modern ironic motif. Of course, Michael flew into a rage immediately. If he doesn't get his carbs good and early he's as cranky as the arse all day - guaranteed. Bypassing front of house, he went straight to the offending practitioner. Usually in these situations he just waves a piece around until he gets what he wants, which usually works, but this time was different. I heard yelling and what must have been oaths in some gutteral tongue, probably from the kitchen staff. Winner was the loudest of course. He told them he'd killed while on National Service in the 50s, and that he knew what it was like to hunt "the most dangerous game of all". He was right up in the grill of a chef de cuisine who was brandishing a patterned dishcloth. They looked like a couple of prizefighters about to knock gloves. Then there was an muttered oath, "va fan..." something. Winner speaks six languages, including French, so no smart ass remark was getting by unheard.

I've never seen anything so fast. It was almost cruel in its ruthless efficiency. Michael was doing some type of weird martial arts I'd never seen before, felling each comer like Paul Bunyan, then tossing their bodies aside like boutique sandwich crusts. When it was all over, it only remained for me to call in one of the "cleaners" he retains.

To cool off and avoid the heat I suggested we duck into a nearby hall. That's where we ran into the lesbians.

"It was like the first time I heard Kennedy speak" he said when we got back. His hands were shaking. I'd never seen him so wrapped up in something since that period he went through where he'd stay up all night surfing AboveTopSecret.com in his underpants with the heating turned off. He said the black chick was "sexier than Angela Davis", and twice as dangerous. There was a wild look about him which disturbed me and suggested a safe distance, like when you see the whites of a horse's eyes. At this range, and in the hands of a master killer like Michael, an ashtray was as deadly as any .38 snubnose.

It's well known that nothing lights up Michael's eyes like pussy. He often boasted that he'd become a "double veteran" in Suez, an expression which I had to look up and then wished I hadn't. He's got it all "on tap" and only has to make a phonecall: blow, hookers, guns. When he spies a bit of slash that takes his fancy his dingus acts like a dowser's wand and won't take no for an answer. On the set of the first Death Wish film Bronson had to be persuaded by the studio head not to put out a hit on Winner after he asked Jill Ireland if she liked being choked.

You know, I don't know if he was on some sort of conversion kick, but all he talked about after that was those fucking spanner-wielding dykes. His mood fluctuated wildly over these weeks of obsession, like an oscilloscope, moving at once from distant and wistful admiration to a turgid and plainly sexual desire. Even as his assistant and friend, if a man like Winner can be said to have friends, my concern was not only for him. I feared for these women, though they be lizzes and rusty and undesireable to me. Remember, we're talking about a 75yr old man with a cock thicker than Henry Rollins' neck and who takes eyeball shots of liquid Viagra like it was Optrex. The thought of a respected campaigner for LGBT rights being found burst open like an overcooked haggis near the bins round the back of a Turkish deli, with no clue as to her attacker except a mix of total horror and sudden recognition frozen onto her face in rigor mortis, filled me with thoughts of time on my hands and too many explanations.

To calm things down I brought up the usual distraction: drugs. I once saw him do a whole 8-ball on his own, chopping it into the shape of a female gender symbol before hoovering it up through his personal gold-plated tooter engraved with the words "To Mikey - love always, E. Hoxha". He slept for three days before coming round from that comedown - "just like Jesus" he said. Sure enough, when he finally arose he looked fitter and healthier than most men half his age.

I pulled out an 8th bag of glaucoma-strength dope from a cabinet, moving aside his bug-out kit full of survivalist gear. I usually try to avoid smoking marijuana with Winner because when he gets high he likes to affect this cod Jamaican accent which he thinks is hilarious, but really isn't. Other than that, getting stoned with him is a pleasure. It's like having your own custom DVD commentary right there in the room, except better. That night we watched Death Wish 2, and he told me how he had used real criminals for all the bad guy parts, except Laurence Fishburne, and hadn't "wimped out" by faking the rape scenes. Later on we wanted to watch Death Wish 3 but we couldn't find it, so we just watched Death Wish 2 again.

[Cohaagen]

Every fucking word of that is true, by the way.

[BlodwynPig]

That is gigantic Cohaagen - deserves a page in the xmas annual.

Didn't Winner have a doomed cameo on The L Word?

[mook]

Every fucking word of that is true, by the way.

and anyone says it isn't is either a fool, a cat owner or from kent.

please tell me though. what does winner smell like? shatner gives of a scent of badedas and sin if that's any help to you.

[Cohaagen]

Didn't Winner have a doomed cameo on The L Word?

Yeah, that deal was a long time in the making, and I'm still sort of pissed off that it didn't work out. The producers were obviously wary from first approach. They were aware of the kind of vexacious demands and crazed riders that had taxed industry people in the past: embroidered towels that he gets to take home, BBW porn, a big bowl of Minstrels with all the brown ones taken out, his precious Mountain Dew (difficult to get in the UK), Condor pie, and three different kinds of endangered turtle, which the American production crew found to be in quite bad taste (in fact, he has a special menu for gala bashes that he calls "The Galapagos Spread"). Still, I worked damn hard to make it all work.

According to Winner, Jennifer Beals was a "totsy" who "still had it". Cybil Shepherd was a "cunt", and only "a cunt". Nothing else. Aside from that, he kept asking the actress Katherine Moenigg if she wanted to "sing backups" on that goddamn album of his that's never going to be made. Freaked the poor girl right out.

Ultimately, though, it came down to the fact that he insisted the episode would be better if they had a scene where a slitty-eyed architect shoots someone on a big flight of steps with a .454 Casull. He has a subscription to Handgunner so he's well up on all the calibres.

Incidentally, don't think that his affection for munchers extends to the other gender of the unspoken love. No sir. He calls those type of people "peter puffers", a term he picked up in Hollywood, or his own expression, "gentlemen who lean against pianos".

[Famous Mortimer]

I love that Limmy and Winner have had a chat on twitter. He's as much in awe of the great man as we all are.

[Crabwalk]

I interviewed him on the phone about his favourite films ten years ago.

The two picks of his that I can remember are 'The Discreet Charm of the Bourgouisie' and 'Bambi', trivia fans. Not a lot of influence has leaked from those films into his, you'd have to say.

I shudder to think what would've happened to Bambi's mum had Winner directed that film.

[Cohaagen]

please tell me though. what does winner smell like? shatner gives of a scent of badedas and sin if that's any help to you.

Well, his bedroom has this horrible kind of "pot stash meets mushroom farm" odour to it, which I'm guessing many will be familiar with, but Winner himself is scrupulously clean.

But, mook, dude, he fucking reeks of this stuff called Mandom. It's this aftershave they stopped making in the mid-70s. Winner bought crates of the stuff at disposal and it sits in his basement like that hooch they drink in Street Trash.

What does it smell like? Ever seen those pictures of dead, bloated horses from the First World War? It's like how I imagine that to be.

Here's a commercial for it that he did with Bronson back in the day:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CV3gA7hNItY

Winner thinks that ad is better than Chato's Land and The Mechanic put together, and that the only reason it wasn't 2 hours long is because his lead kept fucking him around. He also said, in an unforgiveable act of spite, that Bronson was a pussy in real life, and that the only reason he was a tail-gunner in WWII is because that was him trying to get out the back of the plane. I am pretty sure this is just bad blood from the old days.

[mook]

^
i don't doubt that at all. apparently in the early 70s bronson did something dreadful in hef's gaff. it must have been really bad 'cos when i tuck shatner into his crib at night, and gently kiss his beautiful forehead the last thing he says before i turn on his night-light is. "mook, please don't let brosnan do to me what he did to those bunnies." but in an american accent.

i try and comfort him, but deep down he knows bronson will get him in the end.

[BlodwynPig]

When I worked down the garages in the 80's, there was a rumour that Winner used to bring his love interests to abandoned scrapyards, pose them, corpse like, in banged up Austin Allegro Estates and wank furiously into the glove compartment.

We used to see him at the greasy spoon nearby but could never prove he had done the deed. A man of mystery, he earned a lot of respect the way he took apart that rapist in Hackney back in '84.

[Cohaagen]

"How do you know what to believe? What do you believe?"

Neil, PBUH, poses an interesting question in the title of the above thread, and indeed doth ask more than he know. The question has significance beyond the credulous and insensate crank multitudes that sit screenbound, pallid and indistinguishable as worker termites, and the trivial banalities of "C4 traces" and "melting points" that they pore over with forensic imbecility.

However, I feel uneasy about discussing the topic. That is, of course, not because Michael doesn't have an interest in the subject - we're talking about a man who drags a police scanner around with him like a fucking dialysis machine. It is because since leaving his employ, and I'll be frank here, I've had threats. People driving past making "bang-bang" signs, a laser pointer dot on my chest from across the street, and, most worryingly, a manila envelope that turned up on my doorstep without a stamp and contained an 8" x 8" photograph of a sort of army man standing in a field of wheat holding two rocket launchers with the words "YOUR NEXT" and "I'M WATCING YOU" (sic) scrawled on the back.

There is, however, one story that I will proffer for the "conspiracy minded" among you.

Like John Peel, a young Michael Winner was in Dallas that fateful day in November 1963. The topic came up when we were watching the Oliver Stone film JFK. Winner in fact had actually planned a collaboration with the Stone on a project, a sort of semi-sequel if you like, about the "assassination" of Robert Kennedy, the late president's brother and US Attorney General. They were going to go on a round-the-world cruise on the American director's yacht to write the screenplay, but Michael backed out when a guy in a pub told him that Stone was gay.

At this point I should probably make you readers aware that Michael knows a lot about guns. A lot. I mean, more than a menacingly avuncular director of a handful of action movies should reasonably know. I thought I knew about firearms from army cadets 3-star cadre, but I soon learned better than to argue with Michael about weaponry. He's one of those guys who if you're watching an action movie with him will sit there and name every fucking gun that comes on screen.

"...yes, Jatamatic. That's Finnish. Skorpion...Smith & Wesson Ladysmith...Colt Commander...Bren Ten...didn't make many of those..."

On and on and on.

We had come to the "back and to the left" and reconstruction scenes - Winner's favourite - when I became aware that in his usual interminable commentary he was muttering about things that he couldn't possibly have known unless he was actually present at Dealey Plaza at the moment that Kennedy's skull received 100% more ventilation than it required. Stuff about wind conditions, the disposition of crowds, ballistics. Then there was the nasal carping:

"...that's wrong...didn't see anyone like that there...she's not in period dress...yes, the Carcano, Italian, used in the Second World War...Oswald was ex-Marine Corps of course..."

When I asked him to explain what he meant, he turned his head toward me, very slowly, revealing a darkly playful look. Then - and I will take this image to the crypt - he just smiled, took a drag on his Corona, sighted me up with an imaginary rifle, and blew out some smoke like a bullet discharge. This astonishing display was then chillingly capped by a mimed pistol shot behind the ear.

So, are we to take up obvious implication and presume Winner was party to the greatest political hit of the 20th century? The problem with all this is that at the time he was dropping so much orange sunshine and nembutals that depending on which day you talk to him he was either the third gunman in the triangulation, the policeman who arrested Oswald, or a bee buzzing in a nearby lilac bush. Some time later I managed to corner him when he was drunk and maudlin. When pressed for specifics he said he had a scoped CIA Mauser with blanked-out markings that day but "could have done it with iron sights"and that he gave up wetwork when he went into the film business.

I'm not so sure. Though he might be an expert in the Jap-slapping open-handed arts, Winner has always flirted with the Walter Mitty side of military enthusiasm. This is a guy who once turned up for a black-tie Water Rats fundraiser in surfer duds, jungle boots and a T-shirt with the words "Kill 'Em All, Let God Sort 'em Out" above a grinning skull wearing a special forces beret. I mean, don't misunderstand me. Winner can strip down and reassemble a Stoner light machine-gun in less time than it takes a junkie to roll a cigarette - eyes closed - but as someone who worked and indeed lived with him for years I am convinced he hasn't killed anyone since those Egyptians he electrocuted with an army field telephone in the 50s.

Take for example another one of his failed projects. Around the time that he was staying up into the small hours looking at the Prison Planet message board and living on candy bars he became fascinated with those two fuckwits in body armour who stuck up the Bank of America with Kalashnikovs. This became the new great work. Like a lot of notoriously vain directors and producers - the late Don Simpson for example - he was something of a dilettante actor and fancied himself as a potential late-blooming screen idol, rather than a terrifying 40ft illuminated advert for terminal insanity and gynecomastia. Since both actors would be wearing balaclava helmets for the full runtime he said he could play one of of the two leads himself. This is when things started to go wrong. First he had the stunt team fired because they were "too chickenshit to work with live ammo". He'd done this before with non-union crews on Death Wish 3 and didn't see a problem with it since he already donated to paraplegic charities. Then he had himself a replica armour suit made up (at studio expense). Of course, the damn thing weighed over 100lbs, and the first time he came out his trailer wearing it he walked with the faltering, hesitant steps of an emphysemic grandfather exiting a rollercoaster car. Inevitably he fell over, in front of probably 200+ crew, rolling about on his back in the California dust and grasping the air like a pissed human-sized wasp trying to reach the flusher on a paytoilet. Here he is, the guy who's constantly up with that shit about being a ruthless triggerman who's killed on five continents. I hadn't been that embarrassed since the peyote scene in Young Guns, and we did not talk on the flight back to Britain.

His condition deteriorated thereafter. He became sullen, moody, prone to fabulism. One night I came round to make sure he'd eaten and found him with bruises around his mouth and a small v-shaped cut on his forehead. He said he'd had a midnight "hand-to-hand" with a couple of "door-kickers" sent by the Weinstein Brothers to settle the busted movie deal, but I'm pretty sure he fell over because his bath lift was on the fizz.

Is Winner a total charlatan? A "walt" as the military community say? Is anything of what he says true? I don't know. He says a lot of things. He says that he held Rock Hudson's hand as he lay dying. He says he got a tour of the secret Whitehall Post Office tunnels off Thatcher for setting up the Police Memorial Trust, and that he knows how AIDS really got into America. I do know he was full of shit when he said he guided in the second plane from the observation level of the Empire State, because he wouldn't even go up a step ladder when we found a dead crow in his guttering.

[Eis Nein]

Clearly TOTW.

[Cohaagen]

He's also on heroin. He sells heroin, in fact.

[The Ghost of Michael Winner]

[BlodwynPig]

Evenin' Mike.

[The Ghost of Michael Winner]

Thank you for the welcome young man. At least someone here has manners. Pay no atention to the foulmouthed cretin level intellect up there. the public will choose who they wish to believe as they always do. I am happy to ignore him now and will say nothing other than to suggest that he invests in a remote car starter and maybe a whistle.

None on the above is true. i live a quiet life listening to my 78s. I have always loved music. I was the first person to dj at the hacienda - I played nat king cole and the crowd lapped it up. tony wilson was a friend of mine, a dear fellow, not nearly as annoying as the press made him out to be.

You young people need to get of the computers and start living your lives. They should scrap the internet like the Space shuttle. Total waste of money both of them. I've been to mars and it's crap.

[Cohaagen]

Oh Christ, here we go.

What's next, an Oliver Reed anecdote?

[The Ghost of Michael Winner]

Are you still alive?

Well I suppose i should oblihg. Ollie Reed was marvellous marvellous marvellous. There are people who are one offs and he was one of them. Incredible character. Worked with him many many times, mostly because he needed the money. Often i just gave him parts to get him out my house as he'd  often build a sort of nest with the insulation picked from holes he'd punched in the walls.

A famous anecdote: i remember we were in Germany filming HAnnibal Brooks. There was some downtime as the crew were sawing up another elephant and i said to Ollie I'd give him 17 pence and a jaffa cake if he got a set of eagle claws tattooed on his percy. He said only if you get one too. so i got the misfits skull logo on my bicep. ollie comes back, down with trousers, a says beaming "there you go!". What a man! Of course i payed up immediately.

Most of the time Ollie was so pissed he thought we really were at war. Once he shot the toes off our driver because he thought he was leading us into a minefield.

Don't have the tattoo any more as i got it lasered off when micheal graves joined.

[Cohaagen]

Rattled off like a pro. You should have one of your arms chopped off and a coin slot put in your mouth so you can do after-dinner speeches without even thinking about it. And before we get the war stories, I hope you realise that "stolen valour" as a concept is enshrined in UK law now, so be careful when you're ramming that turf-sized wad of crap down our throats. I mean, who looked after you in the desert? Did you have to apply your fungal toenail paint yourself?

[The Ghost of Michael Winner]

I have nothing to prove to you. You are scum and mindless baggage. Thank you for the compliment earlier by the way, yes my knob is longer than HMS Hood and has probably killed more people.

As it happens Monty wanted to give me one of his cap badges but I refused of course. I think I made an impression because he shared his chips with me that night. I was not always a food snob! As for the germans never turned down an invite from Rommel. Man was the furthest thing from a nazi there is. I am sure you all know I would not dine with a fsacist.

DID turn down the Victoria Cross twice.
Eventually they ran out of awards to offer me so they made me a special one out of prewar gold in the shape of a big letter W. I plan on wearing it to my wedding next week.

Most famous person I saw out there? Met Haile Selassie when I was serving in Africa. Turns out we are distantly related me being a Jewish london boy and him the Conquering lion of Judah. Noble looking people the Ethiopians it is the Jewish blood mixed with the black. fascinating man, very short but intense. Piercing gaze! We swapped Skype numbers, then he put out some deck chairs and let me roll a joint for him. splendid chap.

[Cohaagen]

Guys hey! What is the score with all this bullshit static about given Winner karma points?

Don't be taken in by him. I know he plays up that ageing bon vivant schtick like a fucking oompah band, but it's all an act. As fun as it is to touch the hem of fame, remember only one of us here has been in the nest itself, as it were.

He's a phony! Yes, we could wait and wait and wait for the mask to fall off and the little homunculus working the levers to be exposed, but how many people would have to be hurt for that to happen? Remember, this is a man who regularly compares himself to Genghis Khan and Michael Ryan, and who in a recent Radio 4 interview referred to his new book Tales Never Told as "my Mein Kampf". In a confidential ecstasy-assisted therapy session he told his psychiatrist he has two hand grenades stashed and plans to "take people with him" if he's ever exposed.

Take his Twitter account. I know Winner. I was his road manager for years. This is all part of an attempt to manipulate opinion using social media. He has a dream of rehabilitating himself Clarkson-style with one drip-fed lie after another, 140 characters at a time...but without with my technical expertise he's left mashing the keyboard as he flails late-night out of control on bootleg valium and room odourisers.

I mean, what the fuck is this supposed to be?

https://twitter.com/#!/MrMichaelWinner/media/slideshow?url=http%3A%2F%2Fyfrog.com%2Fj2b4xfcj

"I ha"? "I ha" what? "I have fallen over and I can't get up"? Jesus.

Winner is the man who once walked into Curry's and asked for "an internet", told me that the Matrix is a real place, and still thinks the web looks like Jonny Lee Miller's computer in Hackers. That fucking GIF up there probably gave him a focal seizure.

But he'll figure it out sooner or later, and then he'll set up a multitude of cheap fabrications stretching to the horizon like a nightmare landscape of rusting corrugated iron cabins. Like this bullshit about selling his house. How long's that been going on for? Chances of that going are between precisely zero and fuck-all. He knows they'll find his IRA-style underground firing range and greased machine-guns plastered into the walls. Michael always boasted that no one was more prepared for the Apocalypse and that if the balloon went up he'd coin it in like that big leather daddy out of Mad Max, which, incidentally, he was originally slated to direct until he began insisting that they use real radioactive mutants.

But there are better reasons for not engaging with this totally brain-damaged piece of snake shit than his intractable techno-illiteracy and diseased frontal lobes that have retreated from the inside of his skull like an old walnut.

You're giving props to a pervert.

Aside from his standing in the US militia movement, the only thing Winner really cares about is gash and his wide-travelled rep as a mad shagger. When he can't get it wet he's like a junkie cut off from the connection, and sits dead-eyed in front of his 148" plasma screen staring at the Sky Guide for hours at a stretch. He's the only man I've ever known who has Battle of Britain-style "kill markings" on his bedpost.

Most contemptible is his well-known habit of shagging drama school girls, which he charmingly describes as "target practice". Anyone old enough to have read the tabloids in the early 90s will remember the chick from Grange Hill he cast in Dirty Weekend, punctured repeatedly, and then casually threw aside like a melon rind. There's basically a standing warning about him at Italia Conti, or, as Winner refers to it in his code, "Bisley Ranges". I discovered these euphemisms and their meanings written on a notepad next to the phone while fixing his appointment with Cynthia Plaster Caster. Above them, in the top right corner of the page, was a horrible biro doodle which depicted a large-breasted fly with a woman's head trapped in a large web being menaced by a leering spider with bulging Felix the Cat eyes and an enormous phallus. Speech bubble coming out her mouth: "heeeeelp meeeee".

At this point he was so obsessed with lesbianism he wanted to have plastic surgery to make him look like Gertrude Stein. He first became interested in the possibilities of altering his appearance when I told him that the big lizard guy from Babylon 5 was the same actor as the One-Armed Man from The Fugitive movie. The idea seemed totally alien to him, and hypnotically appealing, his eyes following me around the room like a bushman transfixed by a Zippo. He said he wanted to become the perfect intersex, combination male and female created he Winner, and longed for the day when a third gender was allowed on the British passport and he could sample all of the planet's depravities like a sumptuous banquet at The Ivy.

We'd regularly park up in his XK8 opposite Sylvia Young's in Marylebone so he could scope out prospects. He'd slump down in the driver's seat and pull a filthy old baseball cap with a stitched cannabis leaf design low over his forehead, then zone out as he made deposits in the "wank bank", to use the crude slang of  today's youth. Take this sample conversation from one particular but unremarkable January day. He'd spent the previous night well and truly under the volcano, and saw in that morning in a foul mood after discovering that someone had written "NINJA" on the windscreen of the Jag in mustard.

Picture a group of 18 or 19 year old girls gathered around the entrance at lunchtime. He spots a pale and wan girl with straight ginger hair.

"Hey Red..."
(me)"Michael, there's a policewoman up ahead"
"Bet she's dirtier than a sheep's arsehole"
(me)"Seriously, we need to go"
"She's rusty..."
(me) "Fuck I hope no one sees me"

Michael is immensely strong. Deceptively so. I've personally seen him undo the wheelnuts on a Scania with just his thumb and forefinger. If he wanted to he could take a 5' 4" strawberry blond like a trout tickler. Easy. But instead, he seduces them with his secret agent bullshit, telling them in insistent, sincere whispers that it was him who outed Wilson as a Russian mole, and cut the brakes on the London Boys car. From there it's back to his sordid mansion and the inevitable.

It always begins the same way, with a muffled grunt like your grandfather clutching his chest and falling over in the garden, as Winner achieves entry. The main blood vessel of his member, a vein which resembles the electrical cable on an angle grinder, would itself be enough to satisfy most women. Then the awful act itself will take place, usually averaging about 15 pumps judging by the bedsprings. Winner has two orgasm noises - one where he sounds like the mother at the dinnertable in Eraserhead, the other his desperate signature cry of "boom go the 'zoons!".

I couldn't even begin to describe the absurd contrivances I entered in an effort to avoid catching his eye as he came down the stairs afterwards with the inevitable glazed look of satiation, rubbing himself down with a little pink towel, his throat all red like a randy songbird. Such a sight I never hope to see again. And if these revelations are not enough, and there are indeed young women reading this who are still taken in by his unctuous nature and easy charm, let me put it in country simple plain English - fucking this evil old man will definitely neutralise your ability to produce a foetus in later life.

Today marks my sixth month out of his clutches, and my third in hiding. Thank God for the internet. I still hear rumours from time to time, from those nameless, unsung, and usually abused assistants, PAs and road managers that still work the celebrity circuit and I count as friends. A dozen jumped-ship Filipinos that are supposed to mill about Alex James' shitty farm like zombies, keeping it picturesque and bucolic, kept in line with "Doberman-Sized" training collars. People being thrown out of helicopters on the Edmonds estate. I wouldn't be surprised. Noel was said to have freelanced for the School of the Americas during slow periods, and allegedly choppered in the Delta team that whacked Escobar before he was dropped in disgrace for collecting ears.

That is the kind of world we live in. His patronage of the Police Memorial Trust means that Winner enjoys total protection from the Met, and friends in high places lead to scum like Barrymore being tipped-off and allowed to flee to New Zealand where they set up dude ranches where jism is served by the shot glass and men are cored like apples. That raid would have blown the lid right off. I listened in on the whole thing using Michael's scanner. Nearly fifty door-knockers from SO19 and Special Branch. They knew where the bones were and were three minutes from the go signal before a Cabinet-level order shut the operation down.

That is the reason why the likes of him are living high on the hog and I am in temporary accommodation with my money on a string down my trouser leg. We live in a society where the little men like me are smashed like driftwood and left shorebound and dehydrate. The Winner takes it all.

[The Ghost of Michael Winner]

If you thk people are going to read all that then your more retarded and mentally deranged than I originally thought. i drive a British car Silver Shadow not some bloody tata made india HORN OK PLEASE wagon.

As for the rest of you you are sweeties and to be adored, than you so much for the supprt.

yes obviously I like t'pau i wrote the lyrics for china in your hand, it was an instrumental originally. Bumped into carole decker at the budokan in 1986 when i was over there to track down a chef who said he could prepare goblin shark wthout killing me from ammonia toxicity. lovely girl who seemed very pleased with what i'd done with it. took in the show - their early phase, the best - then spent the rest of the evening painting the top of mount fuji. it was black up until then.

[ziggy starbucks]

I'm also a big admirer of Mr Winner and have based much of my life philosophy on his Death Wish films. Here is a little tribute picture I made for him, which may be NOT SAFE FOR WORK if your homophobic boss doesn't like watching grown women kiss each other on their wedding day

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/hh164/mm21_bucket/michaelwinneraslesbaby.jpg

[Famous Mortimer]

I can't help but shake the impression that Michael may well be this forum's favourite Winner-appreciator, back from the dead. If he sticks to it, though, I'm happy.

[Doomy Dwyer]

That Michael has a colourful past is a matter of public record. He is, after all, a larger than life figure, a true giant of the entertainment industry in the classic Flynn mode. That he's a rascal - of that there can be no doubt. A cad? When the occasion demands. A lothario? Most definitely. But it's the twinkle in his eye that makes his indiscretions instantly forgivable. But, with the greatest of respect to Cohaagen - a fine 'whore and a good man deep down - these tawdry reminiscences have no place here, surely. This tittle tattle reflects poorly on the tattletale. If anything it elevates Mr Winner even higher in my estimation for the dignity he has shown here in responding to this malicious, bitter gossip from a disgruntled ex-employee, a placidity and calm that cannot be easy to maintain under such heavy fire. I'm not certain that I could muster such restraint myself. Everyone has a dark side, and despite the stories of abuse, insanity and brutal sex murder, there is an innner nobility about the man that can't help but shine through even during the blackest moments.

Mr Winner, I hope I'm not out of line here, but I must ask - how many of the classic era Grange Hill cast have you done?

[SavageHedgehog]

Everyone talks about the time Winner defended some lesbians from Richard Littlejohn, but what about the time he defended Death Wish 2 from (an admittedly hetrosexual) lesbian:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ge2Slg56FI