‘Never be terrible in a terrible movie’

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The waiters at Le Caprice in St James’s have never had to go out to see the world. The world has always come to them. Just after the war, Humphrey Bogart used to dine at the ineffably glamorous establishment with Lauren Bacall and, since then, just about every major headline-maker of the past century — and the start of this one — has had a regular table, including the late Diana, Princess of Wales.

Over the past two decades I have broken bread there myself with a variety of political, social and show-business figures and, needless to say, the waiters never batted an eyelid. Until the other day, when I lunched with a man who almost brought the place to a standstill. Every eye was trained upon this regally tall, imposing figure as he made his entrance. When he left, the waiters lined up to bid him farewell. They had never done that even for Diana, but they did it for Christopher Lee.

He celebrated his 84th birthday on 27 May and, unlike most octogenarian actors, he can genuinely say that he is at the height of his career. He has had parts in two of the most successful blockbuster franchises of our times — Lord of the Rings and the Star Wars sagas — and has also found the time to strike up an unlikely but artistically profitable relationship with Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, with whom he has collaborated in Sleepy Hollow and more recently Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

‘When he holds up his right hand, displaying a permanently crooked little finger, and says “Errol Flynn did this to me”, you realise Christopher is himself a legend,’ says Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson. He recalled how, after Lee had completed his final scene as Saruman the White on a cold day in Wellington, New Zealand, in 2003, the entire crew burst into spontaneous and sustained applause.