IN possibly the most bizarre incident of its kind, a world-famous film star offered to stage a military-style coup to stop the collapse of a spectacular British TV series directed by Sandy Johnson, who is Ettinger Brothers Productions’ lead director.

Christopher Lee, above (as James Bond villain Scaramanga and in WWII service), star of Lord of the Rings, The Wicker Man and the definitive cinematic Dracula, right, was deeply unhappy when a bitter row between the Musicians’ Union and the TV production company over pay resulted in the big new musical series Betty being scrapped.

Sandy Johnson recalls: “Betty was one very big period TV series starring Christopher Lee, Twiggy and Sean Bean, set in the 1930s, and produced by London Weekend Television.

“We’d built a huge set at Shepperton Studios including period street sets and a night club with a swimming pool under the dance floor for a Busby Berkeley sequence.”

One of the original classically extravagant Busby Berkeley Hollywood film sequences is shown on the left.

Two weeks before filming started the Musicians’ Union, Equity and LWT fell out over whether the musicians should be paid according to film or TV contracts.

“It was in the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher was in power and very anti-unions. LWT was told not to back down to the Musicians’ Union’s demands. The musicians were sort of crucial as it was a musical and we had MU members in just about every scene!” says Sandy.

What appeared to be initially a bit of a hiccough rapidly spiralled into an insoluble stand-off and the whole production was cancelled in spite of the huge investment, so Sandy called his stars to an emergency meeting to discuss the situation.

“Twiggy, right, said, ‘Why don’t we just make it anyway?’, Sean Bean said, ‘But I’ve just bought a house!’ (on the strength of his fee), but best was Christopher Lee, who menacingly said ‘I know some people… these are professional men who I worked with during the Second World War… who can come to our aid and apply pressure to the Musicians’ Union…’.”

Christopher Lee was in the SAS (Special Air Services) and presumably still in touch with some fellow shady operatives able to lean all too persuasively on people.

On hearing this, the producer Barry Hanson gasped that it would be ‘like a bloody coup in The Wild Geese!’, the film in which veteran mercenaries come out from retirement to stage regime change in an African country.

Unsurprisingly, Lee’s kind offer was rejected. But what was Lee like on set? Sandy says: “My abiding memory of Christopher Lee is that he wore fabulous knee high leather boots and his pauses were even longer than (Star Trek actor) William Shatner’s!”