OLIVER Reed. Francis Bacon. Pete Doherty. And there is one last rebel keeping up the great British tradition of wild drunken hellraising. Me.
I drink bars dry. I wreck shit. My sexual appetite is prodigious and indiscriminate. Largely I’ve kept this hidden from the public until today, when the news that I broke a man’s neck hit front pages and my secret was out.
The press swallowed the cover story about it being a ‘car crash’. Yeah, right. He was hanging upside down in a f**k-harness when it happened. Sure, I rode his head a little too hard. I was insensate through cocaine. No wonder his neck went.
Then again, given how many drunken vehicular incidents I’ve been involved in over the years, it’s hardly a total lie. Once I’m a bottle of Wild Turkey down, suddenly I’m challenging everyone to a no-holds-barred road race. Killed an entire biker gang once.
The police and I have an arrangement so news doesn’t get out – honestly, they cover up like I’m one of their own – and I get to carry on my debauched lifestyle. Ever been in a 140mph head-on collision on ketamine? It’s beautiful how little you care.
Why haven’t I worked since This Morning? Because I’m literally uninsurable. The Bear Grylls show fired me for flying a plane upside-down into a hotel lobby when they said I couldn’t smoke indoors. ‘You risk more in a morning than I have my whole life,’ Bear said.
Like Richard Burton, like Dylan Thomas, like Hunter S Thompson, I know it can’t last. I’m on my fourth liver already. My septum’s titanium-reinforced. I’ll burn out before I fade away and I’ll take my legend with me.
Catch you later, Britain. Most likely when I smash an articulated lorry into your house and stagger from the wreckage, one boob out, crack pipe in hand and slur ‘Firstly, are you okay?’
