Chances are if you’re in the food and beverage trade you’ve seen the outtakes from the 1981 Paul Masson sparkling wine commercial featuring a wickedly messed up Orson Welles going through the motions for coin. It’s always good for a shadengiggle.

But the more I watch it (and his many other ads), the more I appreciate his memory. Welles was a showbiz polymath: he directed Citizen Kane and the Magnificent Ambersons (arguably two of the finest films of all time), was an accomplished writer, magician and actor (he was Long John Silver in the original Treasure Island), and it was he who spooked the world with his hyper-convincing read of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds on the radio back in 1938. Everyone who heard that show thought the Martians had landed. He was that good.

Towards the end of his long and busy life he was still working, despite being grotesquely obese. He did lots of voice-over work, playing Robin Masters on Magnum P.I. and Unicron in the 1986 animated Transformers movie, but his turns on late night talk shows and booze ads shut the door. That’s sort of sad, yes, but I don’t think any career has or ever will be even remotely as colourful.

Every year I seem to chance upon that old Paul Masson clip again on YouTube. It happened again this morning. It’s still chuckle-worthy, but I also found a send up of it that sent me into convulsions. Check them both after the leap.