He actually penned Withnail as a novel in the winter of 1969/1970, while subsisting on discarded turnips and nicked milk in a dilapidated house in Camden Town with an old drama school chum called Vivian - the model for Withnail (The "I" of the title was Robinson himself). No) - indeed, a time when Richard E Grant wasn't a much-loved public figure - but Withnail And I was a minor, underfunded anomaly in 1986, and Grant an unknown.īruce Robinson was an actor who'd been in Zefferelli's Romeo And Juliet (1968) and Ken Russell's The Music Lovers (1971), become disillusioned and allowed writing to take over.
It's hard to imagine a time when it wasn't considered a national treasure (it was voted 29th in the BFFs Best British Movies poll in 1999, above The Italian Job, Shakespeare In Love and Dr. Being able to quote great chunks of it does not impair the enjoyment - although doing so in mixed company may impair the enjoyment of others. Here is a comedy that, like Spinal Tap (19 84), Brian and The Holy Grail (1975), improves with age and repeated viewings. You probably even know someone who's played the Withnail And I drinking game (including the glug of Ronsonol), but even studenty idiocy on that scale cannot detract from the film's unique and lasting glory. Just as Monty Python's Life Of Brian (1979) is forever in danger of having its rare magic rubbed away by people drunkenly shouting out, "We're the People's Front Of Judea!" in the Students Union Bar, now the fate of Withnail And I rests in the unsafe hands of quote-reciting graduates demanding "the finest wines available to humanity" and rolling Camberwell carrots.
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