His tremendous volume of stellar work has suffered primarily because of the decline of the British film industry, and the American distributor’s neglect of foreign film. I was amused to hear two very earnest patrons at the showing I attended intently persuading each other, as the final credits rolled, that – despite its legions of genuine alarming spectres and some rather gory revelations in the third act – this couldn’t possibly be a horror film as it dealt with some serious issues. And he seems to be gaining new admirers all the time, which speaks volumes about his character and his talent.

The book - with no title page, no contents, not even an author's name - is OBVIOUSLY being marketed to tell some lurid stories about the relationship between Rigg and Reed.By modern standards the episode is pretty tame stuff, but even to this day one can’t deny a certain frisson when Mrs Peel makes her spiked-heeled-and-collared, corseted appearance as the Queen of Sin (Dame Diana apparently designed this, dare I say it, iconic ensemble herself), and in any case it’s hard to shake the impression that this sort of big set-piece moment is the episode’s raison d’etre – the rest of the plot is frankly pretty thin and spurious. I died in a bar of a heart attack': Oliver Reed predicts his own death in a TV interview from 1994". Well, you have to go to mid-period Avengers, of course, with one of the Diana Rigg episodes, and of these perhaps the most notorious, and almost certainly the most influential, is A Touch of Brimstone, originally broadcast in February 1966.

Convening a meeting of the senior assassins, Ivan reveals his reasons: the Bureau was founded with moral notions at its core, the idea being that they would never assassinate someone who did not, on some level, really deserve to die. His “drunky” antics don’t play any better today with modern, younger audiences than Dean Martin’s do. The Avengers quite often resembles a slightly kinky version of the 60s Batman TV show, and never more than here.

In December 1974, Reed appeared on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs, a show where the guest, a "castaway", talks about their life and chooses eight favourite songs and the reasons for their choices. I think Reed would probably get a real kick out of the fact that his fans are still discussing him and the wonderful films he left behind.

He never worked harder, took more physical abuse, read longer speeches or delivered a character as complex as Urbain Grandier.I suppose some people might say that Theatre of Blood isn’t really a horror film because it’s not actually scary – and it is true that it functions as a knowing, grand guignol comedy more than anything else. He had lobbied successfully for the Reed line to be recognized as royal and felt this made him the head of the family. Reed later said "Hammer films had given me my start and Michael Winner my bread then Ken Russell came on the screen and gave me my art. Last Night in Soho is a terrific film, one of the best of the year so far, and a worthy valediction for a great star and a great actress.