NewsBiscuit

Doctors treating Michael Winner who was rushed to hospital two weeks ago have confirmed that the maverick film director and outspoken TV personality will need a entire personality transplant.

Winner, 71, is today best known as the patronising star of the Esure adverts, but in a long film career he directed a string of violent vigilante movies and has never been far from controversy whether obsessing about crime or turning down an OBE on the grounds that they are also given to toilet cleaners. He collapsed on January 3 while on holiday in the Caribbean and was rushed into intensive care.

‘It’s much worse than we thought…’ said Dr Janet Hinton, from Bayview Hospital in Barbados. ‘He kept making these offensive reactionary and sexist comments and when anyone objected he just repeated his TV catchphrase as if this was really hilarious. We’ve kept him under observation during the past 24 hours and frankly there’s no way we can let him out of the hospital like this. We either keep him permanently sedated or he has to have a totally new character.’

Personality transplants are still rare and involve incredibly complex brain and heart surgery. Even if a suitable donor can be found there are dangers that the transplanted personality may reject its new body, which is thought to be a serious possibility in Michael Winner’s case.

However Dr Hinton explained ‘The personality of a San Francisco bi-sexual human rights activist has become available and so Mr Winner is now under sedation awaiting the operation. The situation was explained to him as he was administered a general anaesthetic. He shouted that he refused to be turned into some peacenik, anti-police, lesbian, left-wing, type. So we just said ‘Calm down dear…’

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Posted: Jan 18th, 2007 by NewsBiscuit