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The Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts is a prestigious school of theatre which draws students from all over the country, from all over the world, even, and from whose doors have walked Gielgud, Redgrave, Olivier and Burton¹. Peter Marwood was acutely aware of the achievement involved in merely being accepted into RADA, as aware as he was of what it would mean to his nervous parents if he failed to conquer this currently predominantly female institution and instead went scurrying back to Newport broke, with his tail between his legs.

In his first week he encountered as wide a selection of would-be actors and actresses as the mind could imagine: there was Sophie Basingstoke who despite her name hailed from Leeds, had a flat chest, smelt of sausages and played the oboe (badly). There was Christina Hind, whose thick fringe of brown hair concealed an acned forehead and a terrifyingly quick brain that spoke only in monosyllables unless roused on the topic of women's suffrage. David Fretter, a mouse of a boy with a shock of red hair and no apparent chin, with an unexpectedly deep voice and the fragile, fluttering hand motions of one who undoubtedly gravitated towards theatre because he was simply too prissy for a real job. Honesty Payne – curiously not her stage name – with her 'hottentot bot' and gypsy eyes and affected upper-class accent that belied a very ordinary girl from Shepton Mallet, whose family owned four sheep farms and had not one ounce of class between them. Lucy Chapman, who introduced herself as Lucille and smoked perpetually and tinted her hair and might have been any age from eighteen to forty but would not own to any of them, her chalk-squeak laugh the only young thing in her world-weary character. Herbert Wallop (such an unfortunate name), a porcine nineteen-year-old with a prodigious range and unrivalled memory, whose rubbery jowls streaked with tears at the least emotive of soliloquies, whose disproportionately tiny feet carried him with light ease, whose piggy eyes were seldom levelled anywhere but the middle-distance.

And then there was Withnail. No first name offered. Arrived fifteen minutes late, on their fifth day of classes, stinking of gin and wearing a loosely but correctly knotted green silk cravat. He apologised perfunctorily, disrupted the class for a further ten minutes trying to find a good spot to stand in, and contradicted their teacher three times in as many minutes.

Withnail simultaneously horrified and compelled his peers. He was taller than everyone else by at least three inches and walked as if he owned the place. He dressed like a well to-do scarecrow and unlike Honesty he was actually posh (just how posh Marwood didn't find out until some time later); he smoked as much as Lucy, refused to dance, never arrived on time, carried a hip flask, smiled only when he wanted something and took Marwood under his wing almost immediately.

Marwood was at first charmed. He'd never met anyone even remotely like Withnail before, and as strong as the fumes of alcohol about him was the sense of glamour, of theatrics not just practiced but live. Withnail was larger than life, and when he was in a room it was quite impossible to concentrate on anything else.

In the next month or so Marwood learnt about projecting his voice and moving in space. He learnt about making himself seem taller or shorter or more tired or more awake through simple positioning of his hands and feet. He also learnt that drama students drink like sailors on shore leave and that of this boozy crew Withnail – whose career alcoholism had blossomed at the delicate age of fourteen, one year in at Harrow, with lethal home-distilled apple brandy (or so he claimed) – was the self-appointed king.

Withnail's glamour did not fade, but it mutated. He was the most dreadful sponger (Marwood never saw him buy his own drinks) but one always believed he would absolutely pay back the three shillings and tuppence or the five bob or whatever he'd borrowed. He was also the most horrific liar: he claimed to have been a fencing champion at school, and when their fencing tutor (Marwood was irredeemably poor in his swordplay classes) said that although Withnail's form was good his technique was too sloppy for that to be true, Withnail flounced out in one of his by-now infamous huffs. He later, drunker, admitted that in actual fact the discipline had been chess, but that this didn't sound nearly as impressive. That also turned out to be one of Withnail's myriad fibs and after some gentle interrogation it transpired that he had been expelled from Harrow at sixteen under circumstances that he would not discuss.

He was also a bully – despite Marwood trying to steer him off course his new companion extorted money, cigarettes, drinks and theatre tickets from David Fretter with depressing regularity – and a tremendous coward, as they discovered one night at the local pub when a trio of irate Irishmen took exception to Withnail's ringing denouncement of the Catholic Church and "all the meaningless twaddle that goes with it". He'd been intending to end an uninspiring debate about religion and ended up offering Honesty to the angry men as some kind of sacrificial lamb before bolting; only athletic in retreat.

In the face of all this Marwood continued to be fascinated by this strange creature. Purely by accident – a chance overhearing of a conversation between the old bodies of the academy while waiting for a class to start – he discovered his friend's elusive forename was rather unexpectedly Sheridan². Leafing through a copy of Who's Who Lucy had leant him, he was not really surprised to find that S. D. Withnail, youngest of three boys (B. D. Withnail, Harrow and Jesus, had a successful meat export company, while H. D. Withnail, Harrow and Trinity, worked in banking and was set to inherit title and estate. "Trade," Withnail said contemptuously when Marwood mentioned it, then berated him quite viciously for not minding his own business) was listed simply as "Harrow", no college, and no mention of RADA. "They don't like theatre," Withnail said forcefully. "They are plain and boring people and I don't want to talk about them."

Marwood's own parents, Mr. & Mrs. of Newport, were also plain and probably, to Withnail's exoticism-seeking eye, boring people, but he still dutifully telephoned them at the end of each week, because he loved them and he was their only child. Herbert's parents, it appeared, rivalled Withnail's for poshness but encouraged their middle child's passion for theatre (and his sweet tooth, if his girth was anything to go by) with a doughy fondness.

Of their tutors the most draconian and terrifying was a shrivelled but revoltingly limber five-foot-high bitch who took them for dance (mandatory in the first year). The only person she found favour in was Sophie. David she reminded frequently that he was to dance the male roles, no matter how pretty he thought his fingernails were, Christina should "bloody well wear a bra to my classes", Lucy was "utterly graceless", Honesty "moves like a slut and dresses like one to boot" and Herbert was simply screamed at to "lose some sodding weight".

Of Marwood she said, "not only do you have two left feet, you stole them from someone else. Possibly a duck." Miss Farnham (of course the hag wasn't married) was not granted the opportunity to critique Withnail's performance as he flatly refused to participate, lurking instead by the danceroom's mirrored walls with a cigarette in his hand and a sneer on his face.

By Christmas a slight change or two had come over the group: one chance meeting had led to them befriending a student from the Royal Ballet Academy of Dance and the girls – with the conspicuous exception of Christina, who had no interest in men other than as The Enemy – were infatuated with him.

Sam Benson was perhaps an easy man to be infatuated with - he was handsome to the point of prettiness, with large green eyes and dark curly hair and a straight nose over a full mouth, and as a ballet student was as lean and muscular as they came. He was slightly taller than Marwood (most men were; Withnail towered over him), walked with a springy step, didn't drink, knew good dope dealers, laughed charmingly and often, and immediately endeared himself to everyone by remembering their names from the first meeting (Withnail still referred to David as "oi, you" and Christina as "her").

David, who was so painfully obviously a homosexual that no one dared to ask in case they were faced with an awkward and unconvincing denial, promptly developed a sweaty-palmed crush on Sam, of which the ballet student graciously feigned ignorance. Even Herbert, who was – if Marwood was truthful with himself – the only one of them who was plausibly destined for greatness, his talent and his parents' indulgent wealth coinciding to provide the long patient push it would take to create that most mythical of things: an overnight success … even Herbert was taken with Sam and Sam's ridiculous gestures. As for the girls, well. They were taken.

Marwood had to admit to a kind of fondness – this graceful alien from The Other School, as their tutors fastidiously referred to it – it would be hard to dislike him and besides, Marwood had other problems on his mind.

One simply does not come out and accuse a friend of being of a homosexual persuasion (unless they were inching their hand up one's thigh at the time) while it still carried a prison sentence, and even if one did, Marwood had no idea what say. The fact was that he had noticed a certain bent (pun not intended but retained for grim accuracy) in friend Withnail's behaviour.

While this worthy did not conform to the stereotype of dearly damp David, the collection of mannerisms and dress that his provincial papa had told him identified a queer as surely as the mark of Satan on their ruptured behinds (his cool Presbyterian father had flown into an almost Catholic frenzy while imparting this warning), Marwood was beginning to notice other tells …

Capable of making the classic theatrical greeting-slash-endearment of "luvvie" sound like a mouthful of pure venom and moved to apoplectic fury by any use – however accidental – of his given name, Withnail was uptight, touchy, and shy of human touch when sober; when drunk he became a gregarious darling - hand gestures always carefully reined in – but his sloppy unfocussed grin rarely included the fair sex in its sweep. He pounced on any mention of sexual deviance in the paper with the precision of a hawk, and tore and rent the subject of the story between vicious words and crude gestures until Marwood began to feel sorry for the poor bugger or horsewhipper.

These wild suppositions alone were no proof, and Marwood decided after lengthy internal debate in his appalling digs that Sam – adored and fawned over by women and men of that persuasion with such frankness – would be the perfect litmus test.

"Sam?" Withnail repeated, leaning back on the jutting sides of the Royal Opera House walls in the twilight of Covent Garden. They were supposed to be in the Royal Opera House, drinking in the staging of La Boheme like good little drama students, but Withnail couldn't afford his ticket and Marwood's had been lost at the box office and no amount of Withnail snarling at David could induce him to produce his own for their use and so – so! – they were dodging errant raindrops in an ill-frequented road and smoking all of David's cigarettes. They had been intending to spend the performance in the pub ("drinking in the staging", Withnail said solemnly and laughed at his own joke) before mugging their fellow students for details, but the landlord had taken one look at Withnail's shoes (incoherent) and Marwood's hair (untamed) and pointed to the "No Students" sign over the bar. Withnail had been quite caustic.

"Yeah, Sam," Marwood said cagily, drinking down damp tobacco smoke like a cold pint.

"Do I like him?" Withnail's forehead crinkled and he scratched his throat with his thumb. Then, in the perfectly inflectionless voice that drove their tutors mad, he said calmly, "I loathe him."

Withnail loathed many things – children, off beer, non-alcoholic wine, his entire family barring one mysterious uncle he deemed a kindred spirit although of what sort he wouldn't say, lentils, dance classes, intelligent women, loud women, closing time, the Irish, the French, people who got in his way, dogs, rent, deadlines, haircuts, most newspapers, the post office, being twenty-two, David, oysters … the list was several telephone directories long. Nevertheless Marwood was a little surprised to hear cheerful, inoffensive Sam added to this epic work of hatred.

"Why?" Withnail added, lighting a second roll-up from the butt of the last and grimacing in the low light, "are you intending to elope?"

"I'm not homosexual, Withnail," Marwood groaned, "I'm not like David."

"Thank all the gods," Withnail sighed. "I cannot abide his voice. Why doesn't he at least have the decency not to sound like a kicked Pekingnese?"

"Sam?"

"David." said Withnail, speaking of a boy with an incredible baritone, rearranged his cocktails around himself. He complained frequently of the cold, although with his skeletal frame it was hardly surprising. "Now change the bloody subject."

In three years at drama school Marwood took an astronomical quantity and variety of drugs, mostly thanks to Withnail and a terrifying dealer the former poached from Sam. He developed a reasonable alcohol tolerance, lost his accent, grew his hair, started wearing a leather coat, and upon leaving moved in with Withnail (who had just about graduated, although he'd been fried on acid and giggling like a loon at the time).

He was warned against this, and came to understand why very fast; troubling and trouble-attracting as a friend, S. D. Withnail was an atrocious flatmate.

The periodic kidnapping of all the hot water was merely the tip of an iceberg of homesharing sins that included never washing up, a certain disinterest in paying his share of the rent, a cavalier attitude to food hygiene, prowling around in the middle of the night, smoking all Marwood's dope, leaving all the windows open when he went out and letting Danny into their flat.

Withnail liked Danny, because Danny was often too baked to remember who owed who what. Marwood did not like Danny, because Danny smelled like a pig's armpit and ate all their food.

Marwood began to formulate the theory that Withnail had something terribly broken inside: whatever mechanism governed the careful monitoring of excess had gone on him. Withnail – when someone else was footing the bill – ate until he was on the verge of vomiting. He seemed incapable of holding off the booze before it actually ran out or he lost his slippery grasp on consciousness.

Wondering how, when he never paid for his own food or booze or fags, Withnail never had any money for rent or Danny, Marwood started counting empties in the flat and came to the staggering realisation that his friend, his flatmate, was consuming three times as much as he had initially thought. He revised figures and winced at the sheer volume of poison pouring into the man.

Withnail drunk – belligerent, loud, unmanageable, arrogant, unpredictable, greedy, selfish, affectionately abusive or simply dead to the world – was still an improvement on Withnail sober – spiky, unreachable, cold, distant, and somehow melancholy. Withnail did not do "talking about it."

Once he found Withnail sprawled in the bath with an empty bottle of scotch drooping from his unconscious hand and had to act at speed to prevent some kind of horrible drowning incident. When he told Withnail the next day his yellowish friend snorted and told him that he must have imagined it, that Withnail hadn't taken a bath that night, it wasn't the right day.

Terrible and strange things happened: Withnail got a small part in a small play but was dispensed with after he showed up drunk and called the director a cunt. Danny offloaded a strange brew of mescaline and acid which Marwood wouldn't touch with a bargepole – so he sat in Withnail's favourite uncomfortable chair and giggled like a schoolgirl on the Mexican mushrooms he'd taken instead, while Withnail crawled around on all fours, barking like a dog and virtually convulsing with merriment. Danny was briefly arrested but returned, alas, two weeks later with an amusing story about a police station in Brixton which now stank of grass.

Herbert Wallop – now appearing his stage name of Henry Waldou, which Marwood did not think was much of an improvement – was receiving high billing in Restoration comedies, pale and flabby as ever in the newsprint. This did not have the expected impact on Withnail, or rather Marwood picked the wrong time to tell him; his flatmate merely said "Herbert who?", spat a thick gobbet of phlegm into the impossibly vile kitchen sink and gave Marwood a piteous look before entreating him to buy more wine so that they (horrible leering grin) could toast the success of this Hillary – "Herbert." - Herbert whatever that Marwood was so bloody keen on.

1967, and world was constantly changing. Marwood was only in his mid-twenties but he already felt old, out of pace with the teenagers and their long hair and absurd clothing. Withnail as ever seemed to exist out of time, an anachronism in all ages, while Danny rode the zeitgeist with the spirit of a rodeo cowboy.

Marwood's father – Mr. - sent him a box of E. M. Forster paperbacks for his twenty-sixth birthday (a bookshop in Hay was closing down, his father wrote, and he remembered how Peter had been so keen on Forster as a boy. Marwood's letter was full of effusive thans and no mention that it had actually been Maugham and Haggard in his boyhood reading obsessions), which they sold – barring Maurice, which no one would buy – to students to help cover some of their infinite arrears.

Marwood caught a bad cold and spent a week in his bed reading the remaining Forster while Withnail complained loudly of boredom, and he could not reconcile the green, delicate England of E. M.'s romantic description with the builders, riots, chaos, rockers and screaming drunks outside.

Withnail smashed and burned their grandfather clock because "listening to it and looking at it are driving round the fucking pole", and Marwood suspected his own sanity was suffering because he thought it a reasonable reaction at the time. Amphetamines or no amphetamines, that was seriously unbalanced thinking.

They kept at speed despite this, because it allowed them to drink more.

An afternoon by the shit-clogged canal, drinking pints of cider from stolen glasses and augmenting it with a bottle of port Withnail had insisted on buying, skimming bits of broken concrete into the murky water. Marwood wasn't happy, exactly, but he wasn't unhappy either, and he said as much to his companion.

"All life is suffering," Withnail said and set up such a bitter laugh that a man walking his overweight liver-spotted spaniel turned back the way he'd come rather than pass them; this set Marwood off, and they chuckled and wheezed all the way home.

Later, when they'd finished both the port and the remains of a bottle of scotch, when Withnail had shrieked at the thermostats again and Marwood was unable to follow a single sentence of Metamorphosis without losing his place twice, they passed each other in the claustrophobic kitchen doorway and Withnail kissed him.

Marwood was unprepared. Had he imagined this scenario at all he had seen himself pushing Withnail gently but firmly away and giving him a dog-trainer's "NO", but when push came to shove he was paralysed with shock as the sticky tongue invaded his mouth, too drunk to taste the foulness of breath he knew was there.

What do I do now? He thought blearily as Withnail clumsily, hungrily ruminated with Marwood's mouth. He considered shoving Withnail off but just as he was about to put this plan into action his flatmate laid a hot hand on the small of his back, catching a narrow slice of exposed flesh between jumper and jeans, and as one long bony finger unconsciously rubbed the hairs growing fine and ordered on his spine Marwood's willpower and thighs turned to jelly.

He was aware, a little later, of Withnail's hands fumbling a deal ineptly at his fly. This time he merely thought he ought to do something, but it was a limp-willed, distracted thought with little muscle behind it. There was some – purely automatic, purely instinctive – swelling in his underpants, as Withnail pulled with his knuckly hand and, after a long gap which Marwood could not afterwards account for, there was a sloppy mouth on his prick.

Alright, thought Marwood through a haze of well-being and mostly-scotch, I can tolerate this. Besides, he'd had so much to drink that he wasn't entirely sure he would make a very successful partner in the kneel-down-and-suck dance.

But he had underestimated either Withnail's determination or his own desperation – it had been an incalculably long time since his last girlfriend had baulked in the face of the squalid apartments he shared. With inexorable slowness, Marwood's face went from torpid to tepid to tumescent to vinegary – his body sagged against the wall and he found himself grasping at Withnail's greasy, awful hair.

Naturally as soon as he'd come he was overcome with disgust – the normal order of things being that he tended towards revulsion in the aftermath of any and all sexual activity including masturbation, no matter how much he enjoyed it at the time – but he thought it might be polite to at least attempt some form of reciprocation.

Fortunately, while Marwood's buttocks were clenching themselves in terror, Withnail muttered something, vomited, and passed out sideways like a draft-excluder.

Marwood crept gratefully to bed.

When he woke the following afternoon he had the world's most piss-terrible hangover. He felt like he'd been mown down repeatedly by a large flotilla of artigs, and little fragmentary memories of the preceding night kept on ambushing him every time he tried to get up.

Eventually he had the whole terrible picture assimilated and accepted, and he came to realise that a hail of expletives was issuing from the kitchen. Doing his fly back up and wondering why he was still wearing his brogues, Marwood greeted the new day by barking his shin on a box on the way to find out what all the fuss was about.

"We're out of coffee," Withnail said in the blind, thick voice of the terminally hungover. He was mostly dressed. "We'll have to go to the café. Have you got money?"

"Four shillings." Marwood squinted in the afternoon light.

"Right then. Cup of coffee and on to the Black Cap for hair of the dog," Withnail said with a kind of dull decisiveness. Marwood supposed that he couldn't expect a magical transformation overnight, but this woodenness was mystifying.

"Look," he said as they got to the door and Withnail wrestled with his coat buttons, "about last night – "

Withnail slipped on his buttons and hissed a little hysterically, "I don't remember anything!", the gleam of panic in his eye betraying him utterly, suggesting that he very much did remember.

"I'm sorry – "

"I said, I don't remember anything," Withnail barked, turning his collar up as he failed to open the door, twice, "and neither do you."

After a silent and sulky coffee in the sulphurous café, Marwood excused himself back to the flat while Withnail ploughed onto the local alone.

He uncoiled himself along the sofa, propped up on a cushion that smelt of cigarette ash and after an extended period of pen-chewing and ceiling-gazing (part of the ritual of writing, this mapping of the tea-coloured damp patches among the moulding) began writing in the flimsy school exercise book – tuppence from Woolworth's, the cheek! – that was serving as his journal:

Theory: it is impossible for anyone to love that bastard flatmate of mine, Mr. S. D. Withnail, not because of his gros. & myriad character flaws (for accuracy – yes they are so numerous that I think there isn't any actual character in him that isn't flawed) or his fucking dismal hygiene &c. but just because he won't LET anyone do so. Maybe it's the fact that I'm denied the opportunity that I want to try. Maybe I'm just deranged (this is very likely). But I do think I could.

Two days later he tore the page out and burnt it.