Making the mold for the sheer enjoyment of breaking it

Yes, Moon and Reed were incredible.
Yes, McKellen and Stewart are lots of fun.
But they all follow in the sizable footsteps of original Hellraisers, Richard Burton, Richard Harris and Peter O'Toole, whose antics (along with Reed) are chronicled in the book, "Hellraisers". When those three, or any combination of two or three, were present at some shindig, you can be sure that all eyes were on their antics, leaving us free to snoop around and do what we needed to do undetected.
Burton passed away in 1984, leaving Harris and O'Toole to their own devices. Fortunately, they were more than up for the task...

• In 1959, O'Toole was cast as a Cockney sergeant in the play The Long And The Short And The Tall at the Royal Court Theatre. His understudy was a young Michael Caine, and one Saturday night after the show O'Toole invited him to a restaurant he knew. Eating a plate of egg and chips was the last thing Caine remembered, until he woke up in broad daylight in a strange flat.  "What time is it?" he inquired. "Never mind what time it is," said O'Toole. "What f***ing day is it?" It turned out that it was five o'clock in the afternoon two days later. Curtain-up was at eight. (Daily Mail)
• In 1963, Harris won best actor at the Cannes Film Festival for the movie This Sporting Life. But when the actress Jeanne Moreau handed him his award, a plain box, Harris, who'd by then had a few, barked: "What's this?" Momentarily stunned, Moreau replied: "Cufflinks. That's what the best actor gets." Blow that, thought Harris, grabbing the biggest trophy he could see and darting off stage. (Daily Mail)
• (O'Toole) once showed up in a sports car yelling: "Get your passport, we're off!" Heading for Rome, they (he and actress Sian Phillips) took a wrong turning and ended up in Yugoslavia. By the end of the trip, Sian's nerves were in shreds as a result of O'Toole's manic driving. After he'd once taken a friend to Amsterdam, the unfortunate woman later confided to Sian: "He should never drive anything. He's lovely, but I thought we were going to die." Over the years, cars and O'Toole have never been the best of friends. One woman who accepted a lift from him swore afterwards that she would never do so again. During the journey, he had ignored a Keep Left sign on the grounds that it was "silly", and also narrowly avoided driving down a flight of steps. (Daily Mail)
• After one binge, (Harris) staggered back to a hotel where he was staying, undressed and climbed into bed, oblivious to the fact that it was occupied by a young couple. He was in the wrong room. "Hey, what's the big idea?" said a voice. "I don't have one," replied Harris, "but if one occurs to you, by all means wake me up." (Daily Mail)

Clearly, in terms of this kind of behavior, the bar was set very high, very early on. We remain deeply indebted to these bon vivants for their contributions to our success, as well as the obvious positive influence on our own conduct.

Undercover Drunks

By now, as seasoned readers of this blog, you will doubtless be aware of the important contributions to our cadre of investigations and butt-kicking that have been made by a secret international undercover network of Tinseltown moles, Hollywood informants and celebrity snakes-in-the-grass. Without them, we would be struggling with the endless workload. 

Of course, dragons live forever, but not so little boys. By which I mean that people are only human, and humans have a limited lifespan.

By which I mean, even famous people die eventually. 

I would like to take the time to honour two of the fallen, who have given of themselves tirelessly in our service, Mr. Keith Moon and Mr. Oliver Reed.

Now you may be saying to yourself, "Those two old drunken louts? What could they possibly have done that was so useful?". Boy, did they have everyone fooled.

While it is true that Moon The Loon's crazy antics and alcohol-fueled escapades are the stuff of legend (as well as his skill behind a drum kit),

 and that Mr. Reed's sultry good looks and acting chops were only outclassed by his propensity for boozing it up and acting the goat, 

they were in reality pretending to be drunk (well, most of the time anyway). This meant that unsavoury types and nefarious characters felt that they could let their guard down around them, and say things that were of a sensitive nature, simply because they felt confident that neither Keith nor Ollie would remember a word of it in the morning.

However, much like Karen Allen's character Marion Ravenwood in Raiders Of the Lost Ark,  Keith and Ollie could really hold their drink whilst pretending to be totally sloshed. They also wore wireless mics in certain cases so we could record pertinent conversations for later use as evidence. It was they who blew the Case of the Hopeless Diamond wide apart with their recording of Lady Creampuff's clandestine (or so she thought) confession to her butler Spuckleworth that she'd hidden the diamond in the trifle. (Actually, the doddery old dear had been wearing it while cooking and it slipped off her finger and into the whipping cream). It was Ben Vereen, another party attendee, who swallowed the thing whole and ended up accompanying us to the Emergency Room where we patiently waited for the doctors to pump his stomach for us, but that's a whole other story. Ben was a big fan of trifle up till that point, but after that day he couldn't even look at a trifle without feeling queasy. Long story short, the diamond was returned to its rightful owner, and now it had a celebrity history.

"I'm choking!"

Keith and Ollie were attending Lady Creampuff's garden party when it happened and had arrived, suitably outlandishly dressed and pissed up, to complete the illusion. Then they set to work.

Sneaky sneak here...

sneaky sneak there...

sneaky sneaky everywhere.

And of course, nobody suspected a thing.

Of course, we all know that both of these fine gentlemen have ceased to be, and the world is all the poorer for it. Hats off to you, fellas.

Oliver Reed and Keith Moon - the undercover drunks.

I'll let Michael and Clark tell you more about some of our fallen former comrades-in-arms and their immeasurable contributions to our cause.

Ciao!