Lloyd Webber is trapped by Lords elite, says Tim Rice

MUSICAL maestro Sir Tim Rice has risked inflaming tensions with his former creative partner, Andrew Lloyd Webber, four years after announcing they would no longer work together.

The pair, who collaborated on West End hits including Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar and Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, have now fallen out over Brexit.

Sir Tim, 72, who is a passionate advocate of Britain leaving the EU, has criticised Lloyd Webber over his failure to back his cause.

‘Andrew said he was a Remainer, but he’s in the House of Lords, so he’s trapped in the elite,’ says Sir Tim. ‘Obviously if you’re a lord you can have a point of view, but I think you get very influenced.’

In 2012, Sir Tim publicly announced that he would no longer work with Lloyd Webber, 68, because ‘we’re not relevant as a team any more’. Sir Tim also voiced his opposition to Lord Lloyd-Webber’s plan to launch a television show to find the ‘next Jesus’, describing the project as ‘tasteless’, ‘tacky’ and ‘relentlessly downmarket’.

The estrangement between the pair is usually traced back to rows over Evita, after which the composer pointedly identified his next project as Cats which did not require a living collaborator.

Rice’s affair with singer Elaine Paige was also apparently a source of disagreement.

Rice, who was speaking at a friend’s party at Fortnum & Mason in Piccadilly, added: ‘Nothing to do with Andrew, but I feel the House of Lords is full of pretty disastrous people.

‘People like Andrew and [Downton Abbey creator] Julian Fellowes should be in it, because it should be full of experts in different fields other than politics.

‘But the rest of them are nearly all political failures who don’t deserve the right to have power in the way this country is run.’