If you wait for long enough a press release will arrive to tell you just about everything.
Take this morning’s announcement from BCA auctions that it will shortly be flogging off a Jaguar XJ saloon that’s currently the property of actor Herbert Lom.
Talk about spectacularly good timing: I spent Saturday evening arguing with a mate as to whether or not Mr. Lom was still extant. My reasoning was that, as the star of the Pink Panther films (where his infuriated Chief Inspector Dreyfus was the perfect foil to Peter Sellers) we’d have heard if he wasn’t. My friend reasoned that, as IMDB reported he hadn’t done anything for about 20 years, he probably wasn’t.
So thanks, BCA, for settling the argument.
For all Lom’s love of fine Jaguars, there aren’t many spectacular motoring moments in his long and distinguished collection of films. He got to drive the getaway car in The Ladykillers, playing a psychotic bank robber opposite Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers. And he also had a small part in Hell Drivers, a 1950s British B-movie about dodgy lorry drivers, which is well worth wasting a Sunday afternoon over.
Anyway, for anyone interested in owning some automotive movie trivia, Lom’s 1996 XJ will be going under the hammer at Blackbushe on the 22nd, estimated at £3000.