Wartime childhood made me, says Caine
SIR Michael Caine says the Second World War was “one of the best things that happened” to him and set him on the road to a healthy life.
Hollywood star Sir Michael, 86, who spent four years on a farm after being evacuated from his south London home as a child, said the organic food and lack of sugary snacks made him healthy.
The Italian Job actor told an interview: “I went with my mother and my brother. By this time I was seven and he was four and we went to a big farmhouse in Norfolk.That was a wonderful period.
“I lived and worked on the farm. Actually, when you think in terms of the Second World War, from my point of view it was one of the best things that happened to me.
“For six years, you could only get organic food. I grew up completely on organic food and never any chemicals.
“You couldn’t get sugar, sweet chocolate and all this, and cakes. Sugar had to be brought from Jamaica somewhere and with U-boats, very few merchant ships got through.At Christmas, every child in England got a banana and an orange, but you never got one the rest of the year because you couldn’t import them.
“So it was one of the best things that ever happened to me, the SecondWorldWar – but we don’t want a third one,” he added.
And Sir Michael told how his family received yet more backhanded fortune when they were bombed out of their London home.
They were given a new,“luxury” prefab, complete with central heating, hot water, a bathroom, fridge and an electric light.
Sir Michael said he had never lived in a house before and “it was like moving to Mayfair, except I didn’t know where Mayfair was”.
Sir Michael – real name Maurice Micklewhite – revealed who he has to thank for his screen credit.
His agent told the Londoner that he needed to pick a new stage name “and I looked round Leicester Square and it said, ‘Humphrey Bogart inThe Caine Mutiny’.And I went, ‘Caine’.
“But it was very good, ’cause the theatre next door... if I’d have done that, I’d have been Michael 101 Dalmatians!”
THERE’S a lesson in Sir Michael Caine’s testimony that living on a farm with organic food and no sugar helped him grow strong.
Now 86, the star of Get Carter, Alfie and other classics was evacuated to Norfolk during the Second World War and recalls the healthy, if frugal, diet as something that helped his long-term health.
It’s true for many of us that if we ate an organic diet and less junk food it would be a great boon to our health.
Perhaps Sir Michael should start a Caine diet and market it by paraphrasing one of his great film quotes: “You’re a big man – and you’re in great shape.”