rupert everett: red carpets and other banana skins

I've just finished reading Rupert Everett's 2006 memoir, Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins. Regardless of whether one appreciates Mr Everett as an actor or the films he has appeared in, his autobiography is well-written, refreshingly candid and, at times, very funny. In his Dionysian disregard for either propriety, convention or in taking anything - and anyone - too seriously, one finishes this book liking its author. How can one not warm to somebody who freely yet unrepentantly admits to being "a complete cunt" ? One notable anecdote is a lunch/audition with Orson Welles where, over-awed by the occasion and in stark terror of the Great Man, Everett's voice becomes a falsetto, giggling uncontrollably like a vicar's wife as Welles' pooch repeatedly takes mementos from his ankle from under the table.

'Do you know Roddy McDowall?' I asked carelessly.

Orson looked at me with a cruel sneer.

'It depends what you mean by know,' he said.

'After all,' he continued, 'the acolytes of Sodom wanted to know the angel of the Lord, and they got zapped.'

'Right', I said, and that was the end of that.