Brit star dishes on spats with Mel Gibson, John Wayne

Barry Norman. Photo / Getty Images

British broadcaster and film critic Barry Norman has told how he had a spat with Mel Gibson - over the Hollywood star's height.

Norman tells of his encounters with Robert De Niro, John Wayne and Braveheart star Gibson in his new book See You In The Morning, out later this month.

In the Radio Times, he writes: "There was the occasion at a private dinner in Hollywood when Mel Gibson insisted he was as tall as I was.

"I disagreed politely on the grounds that I was just over 6ft [1.8m] and he most certainly wasn't.

"But then he grew quite angry about it until some diplomatic soul suggested we should settle the argument by standing back to back.

"This we did and I could feel him going up on tiptoe behind me so that the top of his head would reach the same level as mine, whereupon the diplomatic soul pronounced us of equal height and Gibson said: 'See? I told you so'.

"I just looked down at him and said: 'OK, Mel, if you're happy, I'm happy' but God knows what all that was about."

Norman also told how he and De Niro stood "nose to nose snarling at each other" after he asked the Taxi Driver star a question that he did not like and how Wayne called him "a goddamn pinko liberal" and "lurched out of his chair with the obvious intention of thumping me" after the pair disagreed on the subject of the Vietnam War.

- PAA