Dominic Lawson: A parallel morality for celebrities

Michael Winner appears to take the view that fame transforms the crassest of behaviour into something marvellous, even something to be celebrated

In what we oxymoronically call "celebrity culture", fame transcends morality. This is less an exclusive feature of the modern age than we are sometimes led to believe; the Victorians, for example, were especially excited by villains and those who managed to survive the justice that was meted out to them could rely on a useful second career as a kind of circus turn.

Yet somehow I am still able to be shocked by Michael Winner's account of his dining experiences with the murderous OJ Simpson. In his new book Unbelievable! My Life in Restaurants and Other Places, serialised in yesterday's Daily Mail, this indefatigable showbiz raconteur writes: "Over the years I've dined with him all over the place... A week after his first murder trial... he phoned me up and said he was coming to England... At this point I was in a quandary. Should I say, 'OJ, I decline to have anything to do with you because I think you're a double murderer?' Or should I just say 'Hi OJ, what have you been doing lately?' I decided to say the latter. So OJ spent every day with me during his five or six days in London."

The interesting thing about this account is that Winner did not seem to share the original trial jury's dismissal of the DNA evidence of OJ Simpson's own blood at the scene of the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman; nor that of the even more compelling DNA analysis of Simpson's socks, which found traces of his ex-wife's blood in them – fresh blood, that is, not ancient relics of the many beatings which he had inflicted on her over the years, and for which he had been repeatedly cautioned. No, Winner thought his old chum was "a double murderer" – but still worth showing off all over town.

He was not to be disappointed; "Girls endlessly came to the table to pass him their telephone numbers... We went round to the Belvedere restaurant in Holland Park... and a rather posh friend of Andrew Lloyd Webber's came over to our table. When I introduced him to OJ, he practically curtsied." On reading this, I practically vomited. I didn't feel much less nauseated by Winner's follow up, in which he describes how, four years ago (after Simpson had been found "liable" for the two murders by the civil courts), the one-time American football star turned up at his home in London: "I said to my fiancée Geraldine, 'That's OJ – if he's got a knife, throw yourself in front of me.'"

I suspect that's what Ronald Goldman tried to do to save Nicole Simpson's life; but it hadn't stopped the immensely strong former sportsman from stabbing her so many times through the throat that she was all but decapitated ... anyway, which fashionable restaurant shall we grace with our presence tonight, OJ, you naughty man?

One can sense a slight air of disdain in Winner's description of the "practically" curtseying friend of Andrew Lloyd Webber; but of course Winner is every bit as slavishly starstruck by this perverse form of celebrity – otherwise he would not be telling us at such length about his dining experiences with OJ Simpson (who, by the way, is now serving a nine-year stretch for armed robbery).

The reason why Winner is so skilled at entrancing starstruck readers with his stories is that there is almost no one as obsessed with celebrity as he. At the age of 14 he was the precocious author of a newspaper column – "Michael Winner's Showbiz Gossip" – for the Kensington Post; 60 years later he is still doing more or less the same thing, now fully armed with the anecdotes from an intervening career as a film director.

One of Winner's many less well-known films was an adaptation of Sir Alan Ayckbourn's musical play A Chorus of Disapproval. Perhaps he might instead have turned his attention to a later Ayckbourn work, Man of the Moment. First performed in 1988, Man of the Moment is a meditation on the way in which fame and morality have become utterly detached.

The plot centres on the reunion between a train robber, Vic, and the clerk who foiled the robbery, Douglas. To add to the drama, Douglas has married Nerys, who was maimed during the raid. The reunion has been arranged by a television show called Their Paths Crossed. The television crew – and even Douglas – are dazzled by Vic, the "star" who is now much more famous, and even admired, than the courageous but unassuming clerk. Ayckbourn's searing script goes on to show how Vic, despite the outward appearance of being a reformed and even civilised character, is actually unchanged: he is seen treating his own wife, Trudy, and their children's nanny, Sharon, brutally. This, the public doesn't see.

In his own explanation of this uncharacteristically grim play, Ayckbourn said: "I feel disturbed at the kind of world we inhabit, a murky, twilight zone where good and bad are less clearly defined... Man of the Moment is about the way we make heroes of villains ... and the way the public tend to be more interested in the aggressor than the victim."

I wouldn't want to give the impression that Michael Winner is not a firm supporter of the forces of law and order. He established the Police Memorial Trust, which honours police officers who have been killed in the course of their duty; and, at his invitation, the Queen unveiled the National Police memorial, opposite St James's Park, five years ago. In recognition of his campaign, the following year Buckingham Palace offered Winner an OBE as part of the Queen's 80th Birthday Honours list. Winner's response was instructive. He furiously rejected it, declaring that "an OBE is what you get if you clean the toilets well at King's Cross Station".

What a measure of contempt for "the little people" is contained within that remark. The Queen – or her advisers – obviously failed to grasp Michael Winner's importance to the nation, which, if only they had consulted his many friends in the world of showbiz, would have been made very clear to her; or perhaps not.

Winner has always appeared to take the view that showbusiness fame transforms the crassest of behaviour into something quite marvellous, even something to be celebrated. In his new book he describes with almost slack-jawed admiration how his friend John Cleese deeply embarrassed a Swiss hotel manager who was silently escorting the two of them, via a lift, to their different rooms. Cleese, writes Winner, "suddenly said in a snooty voice, to no one in particular: 'Personally, I think all Jews should be treated abominably.'"

Winner (himself Jewish) describes this as "a hilarious remark", and adds: "The manager's face was an absolute picture. He didn't know what to do or where to look." Yes, how hilarious it is to humiliate hotel staff – the sort of people who would be grateful for the honours ("for cleaning toilets") that Winner regards as beneath him.

Anyway, we shouldn't be too harsh on the old boy. He doesn't pretend to have the good taste he so obviously lacks – in other words, he is not pretentious; and there is a kind of eternal teenager's delight in his excitement at being in such close proximity to Hollywood stars.

I just wish he didn't expect us to share that delight at the thought of his wining and dining an unrepentant wife-killer – no matter how many friends of the rich and famous "practically" curtsied in his presence.

d.lawson@independent.co.uk