Jealous grudge Michael Winner took to his grave
ALATEX Spitting Image puppet complete with pink cravat and an exquisite oil painting from the school of Canaletto — surely these were two of the most mismatched lots ever sold at Sotheby’s auction rooms in London’s Mayfair. But the hammer came down for the final time this week on the estate of film director Michael Winner and you could almost hear a ghostly chuckle and his familiar, bombastic voice pronouncing that the experts had, yet again, underestimated him.
The puppet went for £400, almost three times its reserve, while the painting sold for £84,100 — £30,000 more than expected.
In all, the sale of his paintings and furniture raised nearly £500,000, the proceeds of which are expected to go to his widow, Geraldine.
The funds will be very welcome, as Winner’s fortune was nothing like as huge as he claimed before his death last year at the age of 77. Instead of bequeathing the £75 million he claimed that he had amassed, Winner left an estate of £16.8 million and debts of just over £12 million, shrinking his net worth to a comparatively meagre £4.75 million.
The fortune was far smaller than he claimed due to a combination of his hugely lavish lifestyle and enormous debts to the Inland Revenue. But he always loved to exaggerate what he was worth.
Take his beloved mansion, Woodland House in London’s Holland Park, which he said could be sold for £60 million.
It was not included in his will and was owned by a company. It was on a 32-year lease and was bought four
‘Michael was like a child in many ways’
months ago to the singer Robbie Williams for £17.6 million.
Boastfulness was a central part of the Michael Winner who was loved and loathed in equal measure by the British public.
Entertaining, wealthy, opinionated, exuberant sometimes to the point of tastelessness. Frequently pompous, often abrupt but never, ever stricken by self-doubt. Or so he would have had us believe.
Only now is a different story beginning to emerge of a very different Winner.
This fresh insight comes not from one of his celebrity cronies, but a working-class boy made good, who, over the course of a quarter of a century, became one of Winner’s closest confidants. The name Nick Mead may not prompt the same reaction as Sir Michael Caine, who led the tributes at Winner’s memorial service last year, but he knew the film director better than almost anyone.
Scriptwriter Mead, who is writing a biography of him, says that far from the image Winner presented to the public, he was racked with insecurities about his looks and his abilities as a film-maker.
He also claims Winner went to his grave still obsessed by his lost love, actress Jenny Seagrove, and dogged by money worries that led him to take out a series of extra mortgages to fund his spending.
Speaking for the first time about the Winner he knew, Nick, 56, says: ‘Michael was the funniest, most vibrant man I have ever met. But he was a deeply vulnerable person putting on a show for public consumption. He spent his life pretending not to care what people thought of him, but that was a lie.
‘He was painfully aware of what people thought and that was why he put so much effort into hiding it and creating a persona. The sad thing is that up until the end he was incapable of showing his vulnerability to anyone. He couldn’t even admit it to himself — and he suffered for it.
‘I used to see him become this other person for the newspapers and on television but, in private, he was actually a deeply sensitive man, a child in many ways, looking for love.
‘He was forever needing reassurance, worrying about his career and desperately wanting success to give meaning to his life.’
Mead, collaborated with Winner on many of his 30 films and was one of the few people with whom he didn’t feel he had to show off. They met in 1988 when Winner bought a comedy script from him for £50,000.
The movie was never made, but a lifelong personal and professional friendship was formed. Both men had been born in North London and shared a similar sense of humour and a love of films.
Winner became Mead’s mentor. He knew his way around Hollywood
‘Jenny left him as he could not be faithful’
and had many valuable contacts to share with the younger man. They met frequently in London and Los Angeles — where Nick moved to further his career — to discuss projects.
Although Winner had a complex personal life, he freely gave advice on relationships, money, property and politics.
‘He cared about people,’ says Nick. ‘And that is rare in the film business. He was very good at giving advice, be it professional or personal.’
To the outside world, Michael was irrepressible but in private, says Nick, he was highly anxious.
‘He worried about a lot of things,’ says Nick. ‘Take the women in his life. He didn’t worry about his philandering; he revelled in it. And if you believed his propaganda, the girl had not been born who could break his heart. But that’s what happened with Jenny Seagrove. He adored her. She was the centre of his world.’
Jenny was Winner’s girlfriend for six years until 1993, but she left him because he could not be faithful to her. A year later, she became the partner of the theatre producer and Everton chairman Bill Kenwright, with whom she remains.
‘Jenny left Michael — quite rightly — but he was devastated,’ says Nick. ‘ She became a fullblown obsession.
‘When she got together with Bill Kenwright, it drove Michael mad. He employed a clippings service that would send him copies of anything ever published about Bill and Jenny. He would pore over these cuttings every day for years afterwards. He was determined to get some dirt on Bill, so he’d quiz people endlessly, looking for a chink in Kenwright’s armour. But he never had any luck because Bill’s a perfectly lovely guy.
‘He could be quite irrational about it. We would often go to an Italian restaurant in London called Cibo. But one day Michael found out they’d taken a reservation from Jenny and that was it — he never went there again.
‘He used to tell me he was going to leave her 30 pieces of silver as if she was some kind of Judas. Jenny was the love of his life. He bitterly regretted losing her right to the very end, and even he must have realised that he was to blame. You could tell he regretted missing out on lasting love.
‘He covered it up with a lot of bluster but his lifestyle came at a price. He always surrounded himself with people because he was lonely.’
Money was a constant preoccupation. In an odd ritual, Winner would sit at his desk once a day with a calculator and tot up his fortune, down to the last penny.
At his wealthiest, he had a ( realistic) fortune of almost £30 million. ‘He had money in the Channel Islands, Switzerland and lots of accounts with Coutts,’ says Nick.
Towards the end of Winner’s life, the money worries were clearly building up. He had no income to speak of, yet remained lavish in his spending.
He had poured tens of millions into his house, meticulously renovating its interior with the finest materials. He spent a fortune on antiques and paintings. Each Christmas he would take a party to Sandy Lane Hotel in Barbados; it cost him at least £75,000 a trip.
Keeping up the facade was becoming ever harder, especially after Winner almost died from food
‘She became a full-blown obsession’
poisoning in 2007 and later underwent 19 operations.
He stopped the womanising and in 2011 married his long-time friend and companion Geraldine Lynton-Edwards.
Winner’s career had long since stalled and he’d been reduced to the status of ‘personality’.
Nick will never forget the moment that made him realise what a sad figure Winner had become. It was during the summer of 2012, and they were lunching at a favourite restaurant in a London park.
Nick says he winced as a young couple stood in front of them and did a withering impression of Michael in his widely derided car insurance adverts.
‘They walked off laughing, and Michael just sat there looking bewildered,’ says Nick. ‘ It was awful to see him mocked like that.’
When his health began to fail, brought on by eating a bad oyster in Barbados, even Winner’s legendary chutzpah could not hide his growing desperation.
‘ I spoke to him the day the doctors told him his condition was terminal,’ says Nick. ‘ He was screaming down the phone, angrier than I’d ever heard him.
‘He was on a one-way street out and, for the first time in his life, he couldn’t control it. There was no way he could talk himself out of this one.
‘We last talked shortly before he died. After all the wonderful oneliners he’d come up with down the years, his last piece of advice to me couldn’t have been simpler. He just told me: “Don’t eat shellfish.” And then he was gone.
‘He was so much more than the Michael he presented to the world. He was a complex, irritating, very private, brilliant man.’