Big-hearted Elton John made a phone call every day for a whole year to help Squeeze guitarist Chris Difford beat the bottle, the Cool For Cats hitmaker has revealed. The New Wave musician, now 70, expressed his amazement that no matter where megastar Elton was in the world, he never failed to make the essential call, having agreed to become Chris’s sponsor to help him conquer his deadly drink and drug addiction.

And now “26 years sober” Chris has told of how Elton’s daily calls saved his life – and he can still message the Piano Man whenever he feels the ‘Black Dog’ of depression looming. He said: “I’m surrounded by really lovely people that can give me that kind of love, and Elton’s one of those people. He’s the sort of person you can ring up on any time of the day or night and just say, you know, ‘I’m feeling pretty shabby about this’. He will just kick you off the pitch, you know, just tell you to ‘wake you go up and go on with it’.

“He was my sponsor for the first year of my sober life and it’s amazing to think that a man as busy as him can take the time to call me every day from wherever he is in the world. It’s extraordinary.”

The Sussex-based guitarist and lyricist found fame on both sides of the Atlantic as Squeeze exploded on the charts in the late 70s, with critics branding him and songwriting partner Glenn Tilbrook as the “heirs to Lennon and McCartney’s throne” as the band notched up three top five hits with Cool for Cats, Up the Junction and Labelled With Love.

His life’s turning point came in 1973 when he took 50p from his mother’s purse and placed an advert in a shop window appealing for a guitarist to join his band. “As it happens, I had no band. I also said I had a pending record deal and a tour lined up. I had neither deal nor tour,” he now admits.

The only person to respond was Glenn Tilbrook, a shy but talented guitarist who would go on to become Chris’s closest collaborator over the next 40-plus years.

He now admits to living the rock’n’roll life to the full, blowing thousands on Concorde flights, lavish hotels, designer clothes and endless sports cars. However, his spending addiction led to him being declared insolvent for three years in the 1990s.

At the same time he developed a severe drug and alcohol dependency which left him broken and suicidal. But with the crucial help from Elton John, Chris went into rehab, sobered up and embarked on a new career, firstly managing the young pop group The Strypes and then his boyhood idol Bryan Ferry, while continuing to perform with the latest incarnation of Squeeze.

Talking to Gary Davies’ Sounds of the 80s Podcast on BBC Sounds Chris says that he has been to Alcoholics Anonymous and rehab “a couple of times” and has no desire to return to his bad old ways.

He added: “I’m 26 years sober now and it doesn’t really bother me, I mean, we were at the biggest weekend festival recently and there was a lot of people drinking backstage and they were having a great time, you know, but I can’t. I would only say that if it had been me, I would still be drinking three days afterwards and I would be taking all sorts of things to sort of make myself feel good – but I can’t do that anymore. I just wouldn’t be right, you know. I’ve had dark moments, but I never go in that direction.”

In the often meticulously controlled world of Stanley Kubrick films, it’s hard to imagine anything making it into the final cut without first going through rounds of rewrites, rehearsals, and retakes.

But in Full Metal Jacket, one of the film’s most unforgettable sequences – the boot camp barrage of insults hurled by Gunnery Sergeant Hartman – came not from a polished script, but from a real-life drill instructor.

A Vietnam War veteran and former Marine drill instructor at the real-life Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego, R. Lee Ermey wasn’t even cast in the role to begin with.

Before stepping in front of the camera, Ermey was hired as a technical adviser, brought on to coach actors on how to convincingly portray life in Marine Corps boot camp.

Kubrick, known for his methodical directing style and tendency to exert creative control over every detail, had originally cast actor Tim Colceri in the role of Gunnery Sergeant Hartman.

But after watching Ermey perform an off-the-cuff demonstration of how a real drill instructor would address new recruits, Kubrick was so impressed that he rethought the role entirely.

To land the part, Ermey filmed a 15-minute tape of himself yelling insults while being pelted with tennis balls and oranges off-camera – just to prove he could keep his composure and stay in character.

Kubrick was reportedly so taken by the performance that he rewrote the structure of the film’s first half around Ermey’s delivery.

Almost every line said by Hartman in the film’s boot camp sequences – the put-downs, the threats, the dark humour – was improvised or ad-libbed. The actor prepared his own lines based on years of experience in real Marine Corps training and delivered them with brutal conviction.

Full Metal Jacket, released in 1987, was Kubrick’s penultimate film and stands among his most divisive. Some critics found its two-part structure – the first half at boot camp, the second in war-torn Vietnam – jarring, but nearly all agreed that the opening act was unforgettable, largely because of Ermey.

The raw power of his performance earned him a nomination for a Golden Globe Award as Best Supporting Actor. He went on to appear in about 60 films after that – mostly in roles involving military positions and authority figures – inlcuding a voice role in the Toy Story franchise. He passed away from complicatons related to pneumonia in 2018.

Warning – this article contains spoilers for Havoc.

Havoc director Gareth Evans has addressed the possibility of a sequel to his blistering new action thriller for Netflix.

However, he’ll have to overcome this one major obstacle if he wants to flesh out this sprawling criminal underworld into a franchise.

Venom A-lister Tom Hardy leads the thriller as Walker, a grizzled detective in a fictional American city who delves into a sprawling criminal underworld while battling with a past mistake.

Speaking exclusively to Express Online, the Gangs of London and The Raid director hinted he’s definitely been thinking about a follow-up, even if he can’t confirm it just yet.

“I get a kick out of doing world-build elements whenever we do a project,” Evans said.

“So with The Raid and The Raid 2, it’s set in Jakarta, but it’s not really Jakarta, it’s sort of my version of it.

“So this is the same thing. You create the city almost like a Grand Theft Auto sandbox. So who knows what other territories and streets [there are]?”

Although Evans would leap at the opportunity to continue Walker’s story if Havoc is successful, fans should expect a sequel to look a lot different after the bloodbath in the first outing.

Most of the film’s antagonists, as well as a number of Walker’s allies including mayor Lawrence Beaumont (Forest Whitaker), perish in the carnage, so a possible follow-up would have to introduce a number of new characters.

“We kill a lot of people in the film!” Evans admitted. “So I probably have to originate a few new people to add to the mix.

“But yeah, it’s a world and a tone that I really enjoyed creating so I wouldn’t be averse to going back into it.”

Not only is Evans brewing the beginnings of a possible sequel, but his leading man Hardy is apparently not against reprising his role.

“We had chats about it on set,” the director confirmed. “So we’ll see, watch this space.”

Havoc’s stunt coordinator Jude Poyer also told the Express he “can’t talk about [Havoc 2]” just yet, but confirmed he’ll definitely be working with Evans in the future.

Praising the film’s biggest strengths, he shared: “People will talk about the spectacle and the action of Havoc, which I’m happy about, but this is a film with a lot of heart.

“I think about the performances by Forest Whitaker, by Justin Cornwell, by Yeo Yann Yann, who’s just incredible. We don’t have cartoon heroes and villains in this movie.

“Everybody’s complicated and a shade of grey and that makes Havoc doubly special.”

Hopefully the action and characters will resonate with fans and Evans will be back soon for another round with Tom Hardy’s latest action hero.

Havoc is available to stream on Netflix.