Dumbledore's Dark Secret

Actor Richard Harris' widow, Tweed, stunned mourners at his memorial service last week when she revealed that he wasn't a piss-head after all. It was a moving tribute to an actor who recently thrilled young and old alike with his performance as Professor Dumbledore in the Harry Potter movies.

"He was a deeply insecure man, a lonely man, a sober man — but a brilliant actor. One of the best; tragically doomed to use his greatest talent to hide this deepest shame — the hellraiser that, in reality, was a tiny island called 'Teetotal', in a vast ocean called 'Pissed'; a dry spot on a wet cloth; a parched pea in a sotted-pod; a clear idée in a crazed reverie; a bottle of Vimto in a vodka crate; a line in a scribble; Betty Ford in a Wine Lodge; a bogus Bacchus..."

The shocking truth is that Richard Harris never, ever, EVER touched a drop of alcohol — not once. In reality, his blood was prized throughout analytical chemistry as being the standard reference point for zero booze content — the rare zero Ollies on the Water-Reed scale.

At the start of Harris' career, during the early 1960's, the spectre of Robert Mitchum's near career-destroying brush with abstinence still haunted the back-lots of Hollywood — even today drunken debauchery is a sine qua non for any budding boardtreader. Though his natural talent for mimicry could help him some of the way, to reach the very top table and dine with Burton, Lawford, Sinatra, and Martin he knew he needed something extra — a tang of authentic alcoholism — the haggard face, jaundice skin, sunken eyes...

So he turned to de-constructive surgery, and in a series of operations had 98 per cent of his liver removed, one kidney, half a pancreas, the spleen, the gall bladder, three-quarters of his stomach, 12 feet of intestine, 30 per cent of his left lung, a special "furry" lining was glued to the insides of his major blood vessels, and he had his face lowered on six occasions.

"In the end, his body just couldn't function anymore. He died for his art," sobbed Tweed. "It is sad to think that even after all that he still felt driven to go further — next year he was to have a gobble neck fitted just like Michael Douglas. But it was never to be. Poor Richard."

Poor Richard indeed.