'I'm an idiot. Whatever it costs, I'll pay'

Could Michael Winner really be that awful?

By all accounts, Michael Winner was a terrifying driver. He drove with the reckless abandon of Mr Toad in The Wind of the Willows. In the Daily Mail, his friend Roderick Gilchrist described a hair-raising journey to Winner's old college at Cambridge University, with the former film director, who diedlast week, weaving in and out of traffic, on and off pavements, "careering through red lights and plunging on to the hard shoulder screaming: Out of my way, peasants'".

Just off the M25, they smashed into a BMW. A large, fit, angry man got out "primed for a fight". Winner also jumped out, raised his hands in surrender and declared: "I know, I know, I'm an idiot. Whatever it costs, I'll pay. You can trust me, I'm Michael Winner." What Gilchrist describes as "a furtive conversation" then took place and Winner got back into his car. "Phew! That was close," he said. "He's a Scotland Yard police officer on his way to a Territorial Army meeting.

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