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By Root 476 0

– there’s plenty of competition – but I do know that it’s a favourite of mine. We thought it was a funny line at the time. I remember we had to do several takes because we were laughing so much we ruined them, which pissed Peter Collinson off a bit because he just wanted us to get on with it, but we had no idea anyone would pick up on it. I’ve been a bit more aware of one-liners since, though. In Get Carter, the one-liner (two lines actually, but who’s counting?) that everyone remembers is, ‘You’re a big man, but you’re out of shape. For me it’s a full time job.’ People are always quoting that at me. I wondered while we were making it if there was going to be an iconic line in Harry Brown, but it wasn’t until I was watching it a while later that I suddenly spotted it . . . It’s the line where my character says to the drug dealer when his gun doesn’t fire, ‘You failed to maintain your weapon.’ And I thought, the lads will use that. I can imagine a pub on a Saturday night and a guy comes in and says, ‘My girlfriend’s left me,’ and they all turn to him and say in a chorus, ‘You failed to maintain your weapon!’

In The Italian Job, there’s also the matter of the cliffhanger (literally) at the end. There’s been a lot of speculation about this and in 2008 the Royal Society of Chemistry launched a competition for the most scientifically plausible solution to Croker’s problem. The winner came up with an ingenious idea, but in fact what we had planned was that I would crawl up the bus, switch on the engine and wait until it ran out of petrol. That would rebalance the weight so we could all get out – but the bus (and the gold) would then drop over the edge of the cliff into the arms of the Mafia waiting below. The sequel would have been all about us getting it back – shame it was never made!

From Turin I went more or less straight on to my next project, which was a small part in Harry Saltzman’s next production, The Battle of Britain. Harry had had me under contract since The Ipcress File, but he was a fair man and as I became more and more successful he reflected this by upping my payment each year on my birthday. This birthday, my thirty-fifth, he gave me the usual envelope but instead of the usual revised contract it contained the original, ripped up. ‘You’re on your own now,’ he said.

I only had a small part in The Battle of Britain, but it was a film I particularly wanted to be involved with. As a boy who had had to leave London because of the Blitz, and as an evacuee who had grown up in Norfolk watching pilots taking off, some of whom never came back, I was well aware of the debt we owed to ‘the few’ and here was a chance to pay tribute to these brave young men. It was also a chance to get to know some of the pilots who had actually flown in the Battle. Ginger Lacey and Bob Stanford Tuck were acting as technical advisors to the film – as was Adolf Galland, the Luftwaffe pilot who had led the German attack. What I couldn’t quite get over was how young they had all been – until I remembered that I was only nineteen when I was in Korea. I’m not sure the stakes for Britain were quite as high in that conflict, though.

Flying is way out of my league. I didn’t learn to swim until I was twelve, and I’ve never learnt to ski or water-ski. I didn’t drive a car until I was much, much older. These things just weren’t available when I was growing up during and just after wartime, and they weren’t available in the Elephant in peacetime, either. So I can’t fly and I have no desire to learn: I like to leave that sort of thing to the professionals. But the director, Guy Hamilton, was very keen on absolute authenticity and wanted to film us in the open Spitfire cockpits speeding as if to take off. I squeezed myself into the pilot’s seat and sat there waiting for ‘Action’ to be called, almost as nervous as if I were really going into battle. ‘Whatever you do,’ yelled Ginger Lacey, who was coaching me, ‘don’t touch the Red Button!’ The Red Button? I looked down and there by my left knee was indeed a Red Button. ‘Why not?’ I bawled back. ‘You