There was a perfectly horrible man who was the sort of priest in charge of it called Monsignor Portino and Monsignor Portino said 'no' to every request we made. First of all, he hated us to be there anyway, obviously, but somebody above him had given permission, so he had to accept us, but he was going to make our stay as nasty as possible. Anyway, and so: no, we couldn't put any lights on the mosaic at all, because all the little bits would drop out of the wall if we put any lights on them. You know, I mean, we were only going to have lights on the 22nd, so they were 40 feet up on the wall, it was perfectly crazy, but anyway, nothing. Then we got out the tripod and he said, 'Oh no, no tripods, it scratches the ground.' We said, 'No, we've got nice little saucers into which we put the tripods, so it doesn't scratch.' Still, no tripod. At this time, hundreds of ladies in stiletto heels were going round every day, but no tripod, so the unfortunate camera man had to lie on his back, turn the camera on very, very, very slow and do what he could. I mean, he, you know, he achieved something, but we all hated Mr Portino and the director, Ken Shepheard, who was a darling, wonderful man, I loved, we made a couple of dozen films together, I think, over the years, he spoke quite good Italian and he... eventually he lost his temper with Mr Portino at the end, and to my horror, I heard him... I saw him pointing to me and saying, 'Do you know who that man is? He's a Viscount. He's a member of the House of Lords, and when he gets back to London he's going to report you to the House of Lords, and I'm here to tell you there's going to be big, big trouble, you know, you don't mess around with Viscounts.' Mr Portino turned and said, 'Io sono un marchese' – I am a Marquis. Game, set, and match.
