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 During our Mediterranean cruise in June, we visited “Ollie’s Last Pub” in Valetta, Malta where British actor Oliver Reed died during the filming of the Academy award winning movie, “The Gladiator.”

The quaint, tiny pub is a light-hearted shrine to the hard-living actor (see my blog of June 10 called “Arm wrestling with the ghost of Ollie Reed in Malta”), and it’s filled with photos and memorabilia related to his life.

After enjoying a couple of pints of good English draft beer, we bought a souvenir tee-shirt for our friend Nigel, who is actually a first cousin of the late actor and bares a slight resemblance to him. Nigel also shares some of Ollie’s better qualities including his love of life, people, good times, and the occasional bender. However, Nigel swears that Ollie’s penchant for disrobing in public in not a family gene he inherited.

Gail and I recently presented the tee-shirt to Nigel aboard his sloop while sailing in Lake Ontario. The front of the tee-shirt has a caricature of Ollie and a sailor arm wrestling at the bar, and the back features one of the actor’s many outrageous quotes. It looked perfect on Nigel, who is quite an “Ollie-esque” character around the yacht club where he moors his boat. In fact, the local bar stocks his own private brand of scotch and runs a tab for him.   

However, to date there have been no reports of Nigel arm wrestling at the bar. Perhaps that’s a habit best left to his late cousin.