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Never Work with Children, Animals or Drunk Celebrities!

Never Work with Children, Animals or Drunk Celebrities!

For those who didn’t see it, this Friday’s The Last Leg show on Channel Four was even more entertaining than usual. Mainly down to the fact that one of its guests, comedian Chis O’Dowd, turned up drunk after one too many and hilariously rambled his way through a chat that included an anecdote about his dog urinating on Banksy art.

Chris has since come out and admitted he’s a little embarrassed about his plastered performance, but whatever anyone might think, it can’t be denied that it was a fun watch. With that in mind here we take a sobering look at some of the messiest moments featuring drunk celebrities on TV from over the years.

George Best

As well as being one of the most gifted footballers to ever lace up a pair of boots, George Best also wasn’t a stranger to having a few drinks. For this particular appearance on the Wogan chat show in 1990, George showed up three sheets to the wind, with glazed eyes and went on to talk to the late Sir Terry Wogan about a limited number of topics, mainly his penchant for ‘booze’ and ‘screwing’.

Throughout the chat, George seems confused as to why the audience, who can clearly see he’s sozzled, are laughing at him. He goes onto slate the England football team, even saying Gazza needs to behave himself, pot, kettle Georgie boy.

Bill Murray

Appearing in an interview on The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell in 2015, MALESTROM favourite Bill Murray was pretty worse for wear. But he had a good excuse. Earlier in the day, he turned up to the final taping of The Late Show with David Letterman, which he’d been a regular guest on since appearing on the first episode of the programme. During the show he burst out of a cake before taking turns swigging vodka from a bottle with Letterman and then doing shots.

Fast forward some hours later to The Last Word and O’Donnell announces Bill will be coming on later in the show, after which the camera cuts to Murray, who falls backwards off his chair. In the interview, Bill goes into detail about the meal he went for after the last Letterman show and all of the red wine he’d had to drink.

Tracy Emin

Bad girl of the British art scene Tracy Emin had already partied pretty hard before she went on a live TV discussion show in 1997 to pick apart that year’s Turner Prize.

While critics aired their views on contemporary art in a measured manner, Emin swore and mumbled her way through the show before offering the words,“I want to be with my friends. I’m drunk. I want to phone my mum. She’s going to be embarrassed by this conversation. I don’t care. I don’t give a f*** about it.”

And then she exited ripping off her mic, leaving the other guests open-mouthed. As drunk celebrities go, she was pretty gone.

Danny DeVito

DeVito showed up from an all-night bender with George Clooney to sit in on US daytime chat show The View in 2006 and the result was a lot of fun to watch. Danny blamed “the last seven limoncellos” for his inebriated state, that left the presenters wondering what had hit them, he wasn’t even sure if he’d been to bed yet, we’d wager he hadn’t.

Luckily DeVito on this showing seems to be good-natured when drunk, still displaying all the charm that made him a loveable A-list star. There’s a lot of slurring and weird faces from him, along with George Bush rants (bleeped here) and even a mention about having sex with his wife in the White House. Brilliant!

James Brown

The day after spending the night in jail for allegedly threatening to shoot his wife in 1988, soul legend James Brown went on CNN news show Sonya live, supposedly to explain himself. This scenario didn’t play out quite like you’d expect. Brown had clearly had a few drinks and who knows what else as he swerved questions, just being downright strange.

Interviewer Sonya Friedman tried her best to investigate the situation, but the Sex Machine singer redirected the hosts questions with shouts of “I feel good” and other lyrics. Brown returned to jail four months later for a six-year sentence, charged with carrying an unlicensed pistol and assaulting a police officer.

Steve-O

It won’t surprise many people to hear that Jackass’s prime jackass Steve-O once played up on a chat show, but he really went to town on an episode of Too Late with Adam Carolla in 2005. During his infamous uncontrolable appearance, he swore like a docker, tried to tackle the host and smashed a glass table by putting his leg through it.

He cut himself so bad he needed to get stitches for his wound. Asked about the interview after Steve-O said he didn’t remember any of it. Luckily there’s plenty of clips out there to help jog his memory.

Oliver Reed

You didn’t think we’d do a list like this without spotlighting the king of TV drunk celebrities, acting icon Oliver Reed, did you? Unlike the others we’ve mentioned above, Reed had many memorable inebriated chat show slots to choose from.

It’s hard to look past his mad turn on Aspel Live in the 80s and his epic showing on The Word in 1992, where he psyched out host Terry Christian and gave a performance of Wild Thing that once seen can’t be forgotten, but here we’ve gone for a clip that will be less known to British readers.

In a showing on an episode of Late Night with Letterman in 1987, the actor ran rings round the confused presenter as he talked about climbing trees with Lee Marvin, reverted to speaking in German and avoided all questions about his drinking. Drunken genius and a very uncomfortable time for Letterman.

Any drunk celebrities on TV you guys would have included? Let us know in the comments.

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