Update on Vivian MacKerrell

Further notes to Anmar's post.

Here he is playing a tramp in Edna, the Inebriate Woman a Play for the Day in 1971. An echo of Danny the drug dealer in his performance I think.


And a short section from the DVD feature 'Withnail & Us' where Bruce Robinson remembers his friend, plus some home cine footage.


And finally some old but good blog posts on the film itself, rescuing it from its 'studenty' reputation: here and here

Vivian MacKerrell - the real Withnail

Withnail, the main protagonist of Bruce Robinson’s classic Withnail and I, is one of British cinema’s most  memorable rogues. While the name of the  character - played with distinction  by Richard E Grant - came from Jonathan Withnall, a louche, upper-class  friend of Robinson’s father, the main source  of inspiration for the permanently wasted  Withnail came from the director’s flatmate Vivian MacKerrell (above), a young would-be actor.

Robinson and MacKerrell met at London’s  Central School of Speech and Drama, and were part of a group of wannabe thespians who shared a dank, dirty Camden Town flat. MacKerrell was bright, charismatic and quick-witted but, blighted by a hedonistic streak, he indulged in vast quantities of alcohol and drugs.

On one occasion (directly reprised in the film by Grant, below) he drank industrial-strength lighter fluid when no conventional alcohol was available. The incident left him unable to see for several days. Robinson is convinced it contributed to the throat cancer that killed him in 1990.

Much like the fictional Withnail, who ends the film destitute and lonely in Regent’s Park, MacKerrell’s career was one of unfulfilled potential. His only known film role was in a 1970s horror flick called Ghost Story, in which he starred alongside Marianne Faithfull and Penelope Keith.

In an interview, the director of Ghost Story, Stephen Weeks, recalled MacKerrell’s Bacchanalian exploits. “He had a wonderful silk suit made for himself in India, green and beautifully made… he went to a ball at the Grosvenor House Hotel, got drunk, threw up over it and then just put it in a drawer and left it. This wonderful suit! About three years later he found it, by which time it was destroyed. That was typical of him really." Typical, but also tragic.