Alternative Heroes - Michael Winner

Michael Winner... loathed nationwide (and loved in small measure) for his pompous demeanour and scoffing. He always looks like an old jewish dog that's just eaten a particularly succulent steak, as the photo to the left confirms. However, there is more to Winner than at first appears.

The son of an eccentric Jewish mother that blew the family fortune on games of chance, Winner studied at Cambridge and became something of a celebrity with his writings. A self -confessed playboy, Winner boasts of hundreds of conquests with beautiful women, and can number some of Hollywood's royalty as his closest friends. His Sunday Times column, Winner's Dinners, is refreshingly acerbic and has resulted in Winner being blacklisted from not a few elite London restaurants. He doesn't care if people loathe him. His view is that he has the money and the confidence to do whatever he wants, so toss off.

He had a murder mystery show in the mid 90s (I can't recall the name) in which he recreated grisly murders from the past and attempted to draw some conclusions. This show was notorious for the episode in which a screaming, virginal parlour maid was seen to have her throat cut open by a vagabond with a foot-long bread knife when many families were no doubt tucking into their tea. Points of View were inundated with complaints and the show soon disappeared. Perhaps due to this, the not unpleasant image of Winner striding around the studio and smugly narrating tales of murder to the camera will remain in my mind's eye always. For that, Michael Winner, you join Russell Grant as an Alternative Hero.