Everybody loves a Winner

HE rang from the motorway to say he was going to be late, but when his chauffeur-driven Mercedes pulls up it's still a few minutes before our appointment.

"There were two accidents on the way up. We were stuck for an hour or so," he explains. "I rang the chief constable and spoke to a staff officer. All he told me was it would be cleared as soon as possible. Well, I knew that. I wanted to know if there was anybody dead."

There's a hurt tone in his voice, as if he can't quite believe anyone would think he was trying to throw his weight around and hurry things along. But he's also obviously someone used to getting his accident reports direct from chief constables.

Michael Winner, film director, restaurant critic and now star of the e-sure insurance commercials, is in Durham, promoting his autobiography. He's also taken in Manchester, Harrogate and York in what is a rare trip north for him, even though he admits they're "very interesting places".

He has a reputation, probably largely gained through the restaurant reviews which have been running in The Sunday Times for the past 13 years, of having a fearsome temper. He claims it's grossly exaggerated, but there's almost a flash of it when we pitch up to reception at the Royal County Hotel.

The receptionist is dealing with someone, but Winner calls over the customer's head anyway, "Is my room ready? Mr Winner". The words are barely out before he's off, striding who knows where. Fortunately, he's swiftly intercepted by one of the hotel staff who takes us to the Presidential Suite. Once installed, he is utterly charming, polite and fun.

"The book has had a terrific reaction," he says. "The reviews have been so good I must have done something wrong. I'm always amazed: I always think everything is going to fail."

His father was a successful property developer and Winner was sent to a Quaker school, which he hated, but at 14 he started writing entertainment pieces for weekly papers in London, securing interviews with the likes of Bob Hope, Nat King Cole and Marlene Dietrich. But while his father was "intensely loving", his mother had other, more pressing, concerns.

"My mother was besotted with gambling. She was far more interested in the cards that were played the night before," he says.

"I would say to her, I was 14 and I would say to her, 'I had dinner with Louis Armstrong last night', and she said, 'Oh really, darling, how interesting. Well, Mrs Bisto had the six of clubs'.

"She was besotted with gambling, although she was a good mother. George Bernard Shaw said it is better for a parent to be a horrible warning than a good example. She was both, she was a horrible warning and a good example," and he laughs his extraordinary laugh, a booming 'Hahaha', followed by a lingering 'Tchurshhhhh'.

"My great regret is I didn't give either of my parents enough attention and I didn't give them enough love," he says. "Quite early on, I became successful in cinema and I was being Jack the lad around the movie sets and sleeping with all these girls.

"If they said come to dinner, I thought it was more entertaining to have dinner with this girl with the big t*ts. I didn't give them enough time. I was not a good son. I was not dreadful, but I was not good enough," he adds solemnly.

At Cambridge he edited the university newspaper, writing mostly about himself - "I only write about myself, hahaha-tchurshhhh" he says truthfully - and was something of a dandy, walking around with cowboy-style shoelace ties and ivory-handled walking sticks.

He became the second most famous undergraduate among his peers, after Jonathan Miller, but claims this flamboyance was really a cover for his shyness.

"I was a bit of a show-off, but if you can't be a show off when you are young...", he says. "I was hiding shyness. I was trying to put on a persona that was not me. It is a desperate insecurity, it is a desperate wish to entertain, to stand out."

While he was at university, an article by playwright Michael Frayn said of Winner that: "he inspired a widespread personal dislike among a lot of people who have never even met him," and he recalls an occasion when he was introduced at the National Film Theatre as "a man you love to hate," but he seems mystified why anyone should think that.

"Why should anyone hate me? I haven't done anything. I think I always appeared to be over-confident. I was not over-confident, I was extremely shy and frightened," he says, repeating the last four words for emphasis.

The only explanation he can come up with is that he was successful and people thought he was flaunting it.

He avoided national service by pretending he was gay, for which he still feels guilty, and then embarked on a career which has seen him become one of the most successful British directors.

With films including Death Wish, I'll Never Forget What's'isname, Hannibal Brooks and Appointment with Death to his name, he has worked with some of Hollywood's biggest stars: Charles Bronson, Marlon Brando, Robert Mitchum, Lauren Bacall, Burt Lancaster, to name but a few.

But he hasn't directed a film since Parting Shots in 1998, which got a mauling from the critics, and his work is now looked on rather sniffily, much to his irritation.

"I think they're reviewing the Michael Winner that doesn't exist rather than the film," he complains. "A lot of English critics who praised Death Wish when it came out now p*ss all over it. It doesn't worry me."

There's a horror film he's been wanting to do for a while, but other than that, although he is still as in love with the movies as he's ever been, he's happy directing his commercials.

"If I could make a film tomorrow that won ten Academy Awards and made $300m I would be ecstatic, but I'm not as hungry as I was. I have made so many films; I have achieved what I wanted to achieve.

"If I was really besotted I would not be sitting here, I would be sitting in Hollywood licking people's bottoms, which I chose not to do from about 1990.

"I could go to America, but I thought I have done all that, I want to have a life as well. It came to me very late in life. I was at least 60 by the time I came to a decision that you should have a life, hahaha-tchurshhhh."

He says his reputation as an awkward customer in restaurants is undeserved, so much so that The Sunday Times has had letters of complaint from readers who expected to be entertained by the sight of him getting stroppy.

"I don't walk around restaurants screaming and shouting and complaining all the time, of course I don't. People say 'You are so difficult in restaurants', I say 'You don't see me in a restaurant'. Normally I sit very quietly, thank the staff and go."

He has had a colourful love life, including a high-profile romance and then split with Jenny Seagrove, but never married and never had a family, although he says he's more settled now with his current girlfriend, Geraldine Lynton-Edwards.

But it must be to his credit that he has kept on good terms with almost all of his girlfriends, with the notable exception of Seagrove. "I was very lucky with the girlfriends I had. They were really terrific friends, and still are terrific friends," he says.

"People say to me, 'Do you regret not having a family?' I say I have got a family, I have got dozens of girlfriends, at least 15 of them I stay in touch with. That is a family."

But, despite his guilt about national service and his parents, and his undeserved reputation, he says he is content with his life. "I think I'm quite happy. I think I am," he says, "First of all, who gives a sh*t if you are not? And I have realised too late in life that one of the most important things in life is to avoid boredom. To spend any part of your life bored is a waste of time."

* Winner Takes All by Michael Winner (Robson Books) £17.95