Derren Nesbitt is, of course, a famous UK character actor who played Tegana in the 1964 serial Marco Polo. He was also in Spare Parts, and very good he was in them too.
Astonishingly, though, Nesbitt is also famous for being hauled up in court for spanking his wife with a leather thong some decades ago. Says Wikipedia on the subject:
He thrashed her on the bare buttocks with a leather strap after she told him that she was having an affair with another man.
Sadly I can’t locate it now, but I do remember an article reporting on the case that included an amusing footnote where the judge presiding over the case ordered the destruction of said thong. This prompted my brother to ponder what method of destruction the judge had in mind for Nesbitt’s thong, and what he thought its continued survival portended.
All of which is probably lost in the mists of time. Whatever the case, the strange case of Derren Nesbitt’s thong has always stuck with me.
More recently Nesbitt has been touting a book called The Hidden Bible, which could make him ‘a second Salman Rushdie’, apparently.