EPIC MESS would have been a more fitting title. But to begin before the beginning. Various locations were considered by director David Lean for the shooting of the 1969, three-hour-plus epic; Sardinia, Sicily and India, until he settled for the picture postcard-beauty of the Dingle Peninsula. In this he was proven correct, for it was the only decent feature to emerge from the entire film. Trouble with the south-west coast, as any local will tell you - and here they have a lot to tell Tanner - is that you can get the legendary four seasons in one day.

The weather played merry hell with the shooting which stretched alarmingly over budget. Leo McKern, aka 'Rumpole' who played Rosie Ryan's father, reckons his role could have been filmed in less that two weeks. Instead he spent 11 months in front of the cameras.

Then there was Lean's eccentric filming and his love of long shots.

Remember the scene when the wind whips Rose's hat off?

Wheeee! Well, it was filmed twice in long-shot. Once in Clare and again in Kerry. So long was the shot, you could say that the hat flew off in Clare but landed in Kerry When it wasn't blowing a gale, it rained, filming stopped and the "bored" actors found their own amusement. Which is where local lore comes in. They tell Tanner about all the bonking that went on in between the drinking. Sounds like a 1969 version of Big Brother.

At a drinks party, a feisty local clattered Bob Mitchum leaving him with a bruised eye which halted filming for nine days. During which time, Rosie's on-screen husband, Mitchum had tartlets flown from London to Shannon to provide balm for his damaged eye and ego.

Meanwhile, Mitchum's drinking continued without check; �500 in booze a week. A week! Yet he still found time for "the broads". The other main characters remain caricatures; unfleshed blots dwarfed on the beautiful landscape. John Mills, a genuinely talented actor, hammed it up as the village idiot.

Trevor Howard, a whiskey priest, took his role literally, pigged it out in any one of Dingle's 49 pubs each night and had to be escorted home. Sarah Miles (Rosie Ryan) had it away with Mitchum when her husband, Robert Bolt, wasn't in town.

One such tryst must have been so turgid that she crashed her car - a Lamborghini - the following day. Imagine it, a Lamborghini on a Kerry boreen. Imagine these people. Her on-screen lover - an American method actor, Christopher Jones, trying unsuccessfully to play an "I say old chap" British officer, crashed his car - a Ferrari - it was rumoured to have been a suicide attempt.

The epic mess took its toll on David Lean, so much so that he would not work again for another 15 years when he filmed A Passage to India. His final words on the subject were said to have been "If Ryan has another daughter, I don't want to know about it". The accounts of the behind-the-scenes carry-ons are told in the words of the locals, and they do it entertainingly making for a pacy and racy read.