Veteran film director and critic Michael Winner has died, aged 77, in his Kensington home. Liver specialists told him last summer he had between 18 months and two years to live. He had looked into assisted suicide in Switzerland, but found the bureacracy off-putting.
His wife Geraldine, who he met aged 21 in 1957, but did not marry until 2011, has said: “Michael was a wonderful man, brilliant, funny and generous. A light has gone out in my life.”
Winner wrote film and TV reviews from a young age. He started at Cambridge University aged 17, editing the student newspaper “Varsity” and commissioned work from fellow-students Michael Frayn and Jonathan Miller.
His best-known films include Scorpio (1973) and the first three episodes in the Death Wish series between 1974 and 1985.
His final film, Parting Shots (1999), began with a man being told he had six weeks to live. The man decides to kill people who have wronged him during his life, and hires an assassin to take him out, rather than let him languish and expire in jail. Total Film declared the work “offensive”, “incompetent” and “bad in every possible way”, while Empire named it the 42nd worst movie of all time.
However, in recent years he was better known for his Times column “Winner’s Dinners” and for his appearances on the Esure car insurance adverts. His slogan, “Calm down dear…”, became a British commonplace, and suggested last year that David Cameron may possibly have watched ITV at some point in his life.
During his appearance on This is Your Life Sir Michael Caine told Winner: “You’ve been a friend to me, Michael, for a long, long time. Whenever I read a newspaper I never recognise the person who is my friend. I’m here really to tell everybody that you are a complete and utter fraud. You come on like a bombastic, ill-tempered monster. It’s not the side I see of you.”
Winner described himself on Twitter as “a totally insane film director, writer, producer, silk shirt cleaner, bad tempered, totally ridiculous example of humanity in deep shit.” Instant opinions being his forte, Twitter seemed a natural home for Winner. One can only assume he made all the shots he had in him before parting. Here are a few of the best.
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