Our Influences
The Original London Dandy
The very model of the dandy in British society was George Bryan 'Beau' Brummell (1778-1840), an associate of the Prince Regent: Unpowdered, unperfumed, immaculately bathed and shaved, in a plain dark blue coat, perfectly brushed, of perfect fit, showing a lot of perfectly starched linens, freshly laundered, with an elaborately-tied cravat, from the mid-1790s Brummell became an early version of the celebrity, famous chiefly for being a laconic wit and a clothes-horse.
By the time Pitt taxed powder in 1795, Brummell had already abandoned a wig and cut his hair in a Roman fashion, 'à la Brutus'. Brummell led the move from breeches to snugly-tailored dark 'pantaloons', which led directly to the trousers that have been mainstay of menswear in the Western world for two centuries. Brummell inherited a fortune of thirty thousand pounds, which he spent mostly on costume, gaming and high living, until he suffered the stereotypical fate of the dandy, and fled from his creditors to France, and ultimately died in a Caen lunatic asylum.
People of more notable accomplishments than Brummell adopted the pose as well; George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron occasionally dressed the part, helping to reintroduce the frilly, lace-cuffed and collared 'poet shirt'. He also had his portrait painted in Albanian costume.
Oliver Reed
Oliver Reed will probably be better remembered for his off-screen antics than his work as an actor. His career took off in the 1960s with a role at the BBC playing Richard of Gloucester before the movies beckoned, but he found greater fame as a hard-drinking hell-raiser.
His major films include Oliver!, Women In Love, The Assassination Bureau, The Devils, I'll Never Forget What's 'Isname, Tommy, The Three Musketeers, Burnt Offerings, The Brood, Castaway, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Lion of the Desert, and Gladiator.
Reed's drinking bouts fitted in with the "social" attitude of many rugby teams in the 1960s and '70s, and there are numerous anecdotes such as Reed and 36 friends drinking, in an evening, 60 gallons of beer, 32 bottles of Scotch, 17 bottles of gin, four crates of wine and one bottle of Babycham. The actor explained his macho off-screen behaviour by saying that having "cultivated the image of a baddie", he would pursue it, if it was what people wanted to see.
Francis Dashwood
5th Baron le Despencer (December, 1708 - December 11, 1781) was an English rake and politician, Chancellor of the Exchequer (1762-1763) and founder of The Hellfire Club.
During his day it was widely rumoured that he and his group were evil Devil worshippers, Satanist's up to all sorts of diabolical doings, rituals and orgies. He was an aristocrat and a man of influence but also the rogue of his day, he reveled in his indulgences living his life to the full and not giving a damn for the consequences. As such his name and that of his order was just the stuff on which legend was founded. According to a book written by Daniel P. Mannix, The Hell-Fire Club: 'Orgies were their pleasure - Politics their pastime'.
Richard Harris
Richard St. John Harris was an Irish actor, singer and songwriter. He appeared in Camelot (1967), A Man Called Horse (1970) and, at the end of his career, the first two Harry Potter movies. He was a notorious playboy and drinker, part of a rowdy generation of talented Irish and British actors that included Albert Finney, Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole.
When he set out, Harris was lumped in with the new wave of actors - including O'Toole, Michael Caine and Albert Finney - coming out of the British Isles in the early '60s who acted in the working-class roles of the Angry Young Men playwrights.
The critic Clive Barnes, The Associated Press notes, called him one of a group of British actors who are "rougher, tougher, fiercer, angrier and more passionately articulate than their well-groomed predecessors ... roaring boys, sometimes with highly colored private lives and lurid public images."
Harris was also a legendary rakehell and raconteur, and a favourite of talk show hosts. He, O'Toole and Richard Burton were drinking buddies in the 1970s. According to a report on Eonline.com, he nearly died from a cocaine overdose in 1978, after which he was ordered to get sober.
Harris died of Hodgkin's disease in 2002 at the age of 72, shortly before the U.S. premiere of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. He was in a restaurant at the time and as he was carried out on a stretcher, informing the people trying to get into the restaurant that it was the food that had killed him, retaining his sense of humour till the end.
