Page 53 - Mar2023

Having bought the car, Caine found it cheaper to employ a
chauffeur than pay the premium his insurers quoted should he

go down the ?L-plate?route.
Apocryphally or not, the 35-year old actor then took great
pleasure in being driven past the offending Jack Barclay salesman
and flicking him a V-sign!

Despite enjoying the trappings of wealth there remained an edge
to Caine (which he so memorably brought to the big screen when
playing the lead role in the 1971 film, Get Carter). Joining a street
gang to help survive his teens and later fighting in the Korean
War, he had lived life on both sides of the track.

Never one t o airbrush his past , Caine once comment ed: ?The
t hing about gangst ers in films t hese days is t hat t hey're
eit her funny or t hey're st upid. Well, I'm sorry, but I've never
met a gangst er t hat 's eit her. And I come from somet hing of a
gangst er milieu. Nor have I met someone who deals out
.
violence for violence's sake?
One of Caine?s less salubrious acquaint ances was John
Leonard Ernest Leach (a.k.a. Jack Leach) who owned t he
infamous Gasworks Rest aurant on Wat erford Road in
Fulham. Variously described as a fence, a member of t he Irish
mafia, a friend of t he Krays and, by fabric designer Nicole
Fabre, who briefly ran t he kit chen in t he lat e ?60s, as ?a
rat her naught y man?, Leach and his wife Shirley creat ed a
unique environ.
Information and images courtesy of H&H Classics
Leach became the Drophead Coupe?s second owner in 1970 when
it was re-registered as ?ALO 182H? A familiar sight on the Fulham
.
and Kings Roads for decades thereafter with its erstwhile driver
puffing away on a cigar, the two-door Silver Shadow was put into
storage following Leach?s death in 2013.

Acquired by the vendor whose business interests include a
professional bodyshop some five years later, it is estimated that
its restoration has still cost the best part of £100,000 (a process
which apparently revealed the presence of various escort girl
calling cards secreted about the interior). Showing a highly
credible but unwarranted 59,000 miles to its odometer, the
four-seater provides an indelible link to some of the most famous
faces of Swinging Sixties London including Gasworks attendees
Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. A mutual friend of the
vendor?s and Sir Michael Caine?s has suggested that the latter
used the Rolls-Royce during his courting of Lady Shakira Caine.
Featured extensively in the 1969 documentary ?Candid Caine: A

Self-Portrait of Michael Caine?under its initial registration number
?UGN 842F? the Rolls-Royce is a special car in its own right made
,
infinitely more so by its unique provenance. 53