Michael Winner: Inside the Holland Park mansion he's flogging for 60m
Guess what? Its all change again at Winner Towers. After the recent shock announcement that the 75-year-old bachelor was finally getting married to long-term girlfriend Geraldine Lynton-Davies, now he has declared he is selling his house, too.
You heard right. His house! That house. The 47-room mansion called Woodland House in Holland Park, West London.
The Victorian marvel that Winner has made such a regular feature in celebrity and architectural magazines down the years that we could all probably find our way around it blindfolded.
Opulent: Michael Winner's main bedroom, which King Edward VII once described as 'one of the finest rooms in London'
So its all on the market, up to and including - yes! - the home cinema where Warren Beatty once snogged Michelle Phillips, the Mamas And Papas singer, while Winner and his thengirlfriend were trying to watch The Day Of The Locust.
Boom! The garden where Winner hired a brass band to play Happy Birthday to his one-time paramour, Jenny Seagrove.
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All this history and architecture, now going, going, gone to anyone who can afford the asking price of more than 60million. This, if achieved, would make it one of the most expensive houses in London.
Yet it seems strange that Winner is selling up at this stage in his life, particularly when he always seem! ed so at tached to the place.
It never crossed my mind that I would move from here, he sighs, then gets down to brass tacks.
The house is owned by a company that I own, so I wont even get a tax-free sale. If I get the asking price, I will pay 28million tax. Not inconsiderable!
The happy couple: Michael is due to marry Geraldine, who finds the property 'a bit forbidding'
What has got into the giddy goat? Most people want to set up house when they marry, not get rid of the comfortable and familiar home that they grew up in. Not to mention also flogging off a great deal of the chattels and treasures that lie within. But not Michael Winner. He has always done things his way.
Oh darling, the whole thing is just wearing me down, the sheer effort of keeping this place going, cries Winner from the depths of one of his plump, chintzy sofas.
Im always phoning the plumber, the tiler, the grounds people, the bulb people.
The bulb people? Yes, there are more than 3,400 electric bulbs in this house. Someones constantly changing them. I got a bill the other day. 1,000. For changing bulbs. It is just getting too much, like running a museum or a stately home. I dont even know how to work that television.
Modern touch: The huge swimming pool complex, located in the basement of the vast, Queen Anne-style house
He points to a giant screen about the size of a ping-pong table in the corner of the room.
At my age, he adds, I want to simplify my life.
Weare in what he calls the television room, with luscious green views of the garden and logs piled high by a grand fireplace. Or is it the sitting room? Or the drawing room, or the other room off the dining room? I never can quit! e get my bearings.
Like an Escher puzzle where the stairs seem to go in two directions at once, Woodland House is an unfolding collection of public rooms, leading up and down and into each other.
Leafy suburbia: The property was built in the 19th century for Victorian artist Sir Luke Fildes
Some were created by interior designerTessa Kennedy, some by Winner himself. In most of the rooms, peach walls throb with the intensity of a Torquay hotel, while shelves and sideboards groan with Winners endless collections of objets dart. To confuse matters even more, the interior layout has been moved around often over the years.
He takes me through one room, for example, which used to be his bedroom. Oh, this room has many memories; this is where I entertained the ladies. That was nice. That was my bathroom over there, he points out, helpfully.
On the way in, I had seen Geraldine in some sort of ironing antechamber, pressing clothes in preparation for their trip to France before their September wedding. One can certainly see why she would want a change; an escape from the shadows of the past.
Fancy a dip? The sumptuous Jacuzzi room
She was very keen to move - she wanted somewhere new for a new life. She has always thought that the house was a bit forbidding, he says.
In a bid to declutter, Winner has also been selling off some of his possessions. He has just put six old masters up for auction. Also, a couple of bits of jade which his father collected have just been sold at Sothebys for 460,000.
Soon, the auction house Christies will host an evening sale at its South Kensington rooms; a kind of Michael Winner garage sale. It will include more than 100 items from this house, including ! a Michae l Winner directors chair and vintage film posters.
Best seat in the house: Mr Winner's director's chair takes pride of place in the front row of the cinema room, which is packed with film memorabilia
I know that people will say hes got to sell the house, he is broke, he says.
I have been saying I am 9million in debt, but you dont get that much in debt unless you have massive security.
To put it mildly, I am still worth a few bob. I dont have to sell the house for financial reasons. If I dont sell it, I will stay here and I wont have to cut down on sandwiches or private jets.
His original plan was to leave his home to the nation as Winner Film Museum. Complete with a life-sized animatronic model of himself in the hall welcoming visitors with the words: Calm down, dear, Im only a dummy.
Now, it seems unlikely that this will happen. The local Kensington & Chelsea council has baulked at spending 15million to buy the freehold of Woodland House, so now Winner has been almost forced to sell.
Celebrity friends: Actor Warren Beatty (left) and Michelle Phillips of The Mamas And The Papas enjoyed staying with Mr Winner
Perhaps, to be honest, it is an arrangement that suits both parties. He admits that the house has been discreetly on the market for four months and takes me off on a tour of the premises.
So, what exactly would the new owners get for their money? First and foremost, a slice of London history. The house sits on the bend of a leafy crescent in Kensington and was built in the Queen Anne style by Richard Norman Shaw ! for a Vi ctorian artist called Sir Luke Fildes. All of which makes it very unusual. When Edward VII sat for a portrait in Fildess studio - now Winners bedroom - he described it as one of the finest rooms in London.
We trot through the room Winners used as his principal bedroom since 1990. He estimates he has entertained about 30 lady friends here as overnight guests since then. Dear me! Blush.
Boyhood home: Mr Winner's parents bought the property and the film director spent his childhood there
The vista takes in Michaels neatly folded silk pyjamas, his erotic brass figurines and a stuffed gonk. The proportions are grand. Indeed, it makes Geraldines modest adjoining bedroom look like an afterthought.
Well darling, you know, she has got a lovely view of the garden, says Michael.
Winners parents bought Woodland House cheap after the war, because of its bomb damage. He grew up a lonely little boy here, never quite fitting in.
His childhood bedroom was in what is now the kitchen. On his bar mitzvah, he cried on a pile of minks on his bed while his mother played poker with her cronies in one of the reception rooms.
Today, it is where his cooks make the kind of simple food such as roast duck, which he likes. On one wall there is a carved wooden stag head which Arnold Schwarzenegger correctly identified as Austrian. Winner once threw a party for him in the dining room, serving up beef stroganoff and a major crowd.
Friends and neighbours: Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (left) has stayedas a guest of Mr Winner, while rocker Jimmy Page (right) is a neighbour
We take in the balcony overlooking his half-acre garden, where Marlon Brando once confessed he hated acting and went to drama school only to meet girls. Over there is the fence where Michael chats to his beloved neighbour, Led Zeppelins Jimmy Page.
Used to mainline heroin. Now doesnt even drink. Just bobs up and down the road with his shopping bags. Quiet as a mouse.
Downstairs in the basement, there is the swimming pool and some fascinating smaller rooms. One chamber holds Coco Chanels panelled mirror from her Paris apartment. Behind it lurks a kind of photographic secret shrine to past Winner girlfriends, a silent thicket of beauties trapped behind silver frames.
Now. That is a famous girl, what is her name? I cant recall. That is a lovely girl, a Benny Hill actress. That is Vanessa Perry, whom I was with for a long time. That is Catherine Neilson. And that is enough, or you will get me shot.
Winner says he is dreaming now of a penthouse with lovely views, a terrace and flowers. He doesnt think he will be sad to leave, but is not sure.
However, he is not sentimental about the new owners of Woodland House. Anyone whos got the money!
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