When Not Looking Good In A Bikini, Dame Helen Mirren Likes A Snort Or Four

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of a hilariously hyperbolic headline, particularly from the British tabloid rag subgenre (see: Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster). So, it’s nice to see that the news.com.au crew have been inspired – clearly – by their friends across the pond with this Monday morning corker:

Nazi fears stopped me snorting cocaine: Helen Mirren

The story is based on a “magazine interview” (thanks for the reference, News crew) in which Dame Helen goes into the gory details of pretty much everything, including her experiences in the field of recreational drug-taking – and evidently the Dame is an old hand!

Mirren said she used to take “a bit of cocaine. I loved coke. I never did a lot, just a little bit at parties.

“But what ended it for me was when they caught Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon, in the early 80s.

“He was hiding in South America and living off the proceeds of being a cocaine baron.

“And I read that in the paper, and all the cards fell into place and I saw how my little sniff of cocaine at a party had an absolute direct route to this f…ing horrible man in South America.

“And from that day I never touched cocaine again. Until that moment I had never grasped the full horrifying structure of what brings coke to our parties in Britain.”

Well, yes, there’s nothing like a Nazi war criminal to put a dampener on that party spirit. Let that be a lesson to you, Kate Moss!