The Sixth Degree of Christopher Lee
Posted by Tom Lennon in UncategorizedThis evening we returned to Birmingham after spending the last few days visiting Clare’s family in the South Kent coastal town of Hythe. It’s a 400-odd mile round trip, so forgive me if I sound exhausted. My Kerouac gland ain’t what it used to be.
As well as being a pretty town that’s been steeped, soaked and marinated overnight in history, Hythe is also home to the legendary screen actor Christopher Lee. At least, that’s what Clare’s parents have told me.
Lee, of course, has had a long and distinguished career. According to The Oracle of Bacon – the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon people – he’s the highest placed living actor in their Centre of the Hollywood Universe chart (second only to the late, great Rod Steiger). In case you don’t know (or can’t be arsed remembering), Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon was a trivia game popular amongst film geeks in the late-90s. Its purpose was to connect any given actor or actress with Kevin Bacon in as few moves as possible.
For example, only three films separate Kevin Bacon from Laurel & Hardy:
Kevin Bacon appeared in 2008s New York, I Love You with Cloris Leachman, she appeared in Herbie Goes Bananas (1980) with Iris Adrian and she appeared in Our Relations (1936) with Stan and Ollie.
That’s impressive. The Centre of the Hollywood Universe was an attempt to refine the methodology and find out which stars had an even greater gravitational pull than Mr Bacon. In the case of Christopher Lee, only two films stand between him and Laurel & Hardy:
Christopher Lee appeared in 1958′s Dracula with Peter Cushing, who previously appeared in A Chump at Oxford (1940) with The Immortal Duo.
I used to have a theory that Lee was something of a real-life Forrest Gump based on the number of historically significant people he seems to have come into contact with. He was, after all, a step-cousin to Ian Fleming and the only member of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings cast to have met JRR Tolkein. The theory was subsequently abandoned, however, after I couldn’t think of any more examples.
In any case, according Clare’s parents the great man lives just around the corner from them. Now, I’ve visited Hythe on numerous occasions and have yet to catch a glimpse of the erstwhile Prince of Darkness. I haven’t even seen him at the local Waitrose.
I’m starting to think they’re pulling my leg.





