George Bernard Shaw Forced Six Litres Of White Lightning Down My Throat, Slurs Actor

Not very luvverly at all

The distinguished star of screen and stage, Rupert Everett, was found sleeping in a West End wheelie bin this morning, surrounded by empty White Lightning bottles, dozens of fag butts and the regurgitated remains of a stale pasty.

The inebriated actor was discovered when a takeaway worker accidentally disturbed his nap by emptying a bucket of peelings into the bin.

After a brilliant improvisation featuring many interesting words from the days of Shakespeare, Mr Everett struggled out of his impromptu bedchamber and promptly blamed long-dead playwright George Bernard Shaw for his heightened emotional state.

“I’m Per-prufessioner Higgins from My Fair Lady, see?” he explained to PC Savage, a passing policeman. “Hang on, thass not right… Iss about a pygmy lion or summing - I dunno, iss fulla words an’ things… ‘s really hard to remember id all. I’m und’ a lodda strain. S’really hard t’remember all those words, an’ names, an’ stuff. That bloke what writ all them words an’ names an’ ev’thing - he juss din’ know when to stop, ‘f y’ask me.”

“’Smy ‘pinion,” he added. “ Scuse me - I couldn’ borr’ a poun’ fra cuppa tea, could I? Yull get it back, swear on me mutha’s grave goblesser.”

“D’y’know who I am? I’m Richard Burton!” insisted Mr Everett, as he was frogmarched to a waiting police van. “Well, I’m not the real Richard Burton – obvioushly - not really. ‘Cos ‘e’s dead. But I’m jus’ like him. He liked a drop, dinee? F’riz nerves. Same ‘ere… y’got ‘ny fags, mate?”

“A dunt do drugs!” he shouted to a bemused street cleaner as he was pushed into the back of the van. “Drugs’re fuh losers. I mean, I wood an’ all, don’ get me wrong… but I’m 50 so like I gotta look after meself in’ I?”

Mr Everett’s virtuoso performance before the magistrate is expected to draw record matinee crowds when it opens later this afternoon.