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By Root 350 0

Frank Oz, who is only slightly better known as Miss Piggy from the Muppets. I asked them both down to Rectory Farm for a lunch party we were having, to discuss the film, and was surprised to find that Steve was actually very shy. There were about thirty of us gathered there that day, but because the sitting room was huge, it was far from crowded. ‘I’d love to have a place like this,’ Steve said rather wistfully, looking round. ‘Well you could!’ I said, surprised by his comment: I knew how successful Steve was. ‘Yes . . .’ he said, ‘but I wouldn’t have the friends to fill it.’ It’s strange how often actors who are able to come across as the most gregarious of people on screen can actually be quite inhibited in real life.

Inhibition is not one of my problems and eventually, at the end of the lunch, I broached the subject of location with Frank. The story for Scoundrels is set – according to the script – in the south of France in summer, but I was all too aware of the costs that would be involved in taking a crew there at the height of the season. ‘So where are we actually shooting, then, Frank?’ I asked, prepared for some decaying Eastern European resort. ‘It’s set in the south of France,’ Frank replied, ‘so we shoot in the south of France.’ Those words were music to my ears.

The south of France is one of my favourite places in the world. I first went there when Peter Ustinov lent my friend Terence Stamp his yacht and house in the hills behind Cannes as a present for starring in Peter’s movie Billy Budd and Terry took me along for the ride. I had never had a holiday in a sunny place before – or anywhere else, come to think of it – and although I had been in a hot place before – Korea – on that trip, the sunbathing was compulsory and it wasn’t exactly much of a holiday. In spite of my experiences there, I hadn’t learnt the lesson that every fair-skinned person should know by heart and I rushed out on to the beach at Cannes on the first day and fell asleep. By the time I woke up, I was lobster-red and practically a burns victim. I stayed in bed over the next few days and was tended to by the housekeeper at the villa who rubbed me all over with tomatoes. It’s not as sexy as it sounds: my skin was so hot it smelt as if she was frying them. I decided I could get fried tomatoes in London and as soon as I could move without wincing I headed straight back home. I have rarely sunbathed since and every time I see one of those ageing fanatic sunbathers with skin like a crocodile handbag I’m glad I had the early warning!

Although I went back to Cannes several times for the film festival, it was always so crowded that it was impossible to leave the hotel without being pursued and it wasn’t until I was invited by Peter Sellers, who was filming There’s a Girl in my Soup with Goldie Hawn there, that I got to know the south of France better. Peter had rented a yacht and he and his agent and my agent Dennis Selinger and I spent an idyllic weekend sailing from port to port. We eventually wound up in St Tropez, the location for Peter’s movie honeymoon. I remember being on the set watching Peter and Goldie sitting up in the nuptial bed when a waiter brings in a bottle of champagne from the management and, in a comedy French accent, wishes them love and ‘a penis’. Peter cracked up every time the actor said this and it took several takes to get it right.

While Peter and Goldie were working, Dennis and I explored St Tropez. It was right in the middle of the boom that Brigitte Bardot had created after she and Roger Vadim made the movie And God Created Woman there in the late Fifties. The beaches were incredible, the restaurants were unforgettable and the whole place was full of the most beautiful people I had ever seen. It was as if there was a customs post keeping all the uglies at bay. I’m happy to say that Dennis, Peter and I had arrived by sea where the checks must have been more lax, because I fell in love with the place and have spent the rest of my life looking for excuses to head back there.

I couldn’t have had a better excuse than Dirty