Near the end of his life he was brought onto some TV shows specifically for his drinking; for example The Word put bottles of drink in his dressing room so he could be secretly filmed getting drunk. He was forced to leave the set of the Channel 4 television discussion programme After Dark after arriving drunk and attempting to kiss feminist writer Kate Millett, uttering the memorable phrase "give us a kiss, big tits". He was seemingly very drunk on the Michael Aspel chat show, to many highly entertaining, to others a waste of a great acting talent. However, author Cliff Goodwin, in his biography of Reed titled Evil Spirits, offers the theory that Reed was not always as drunk on chat shows as he appeared to be, but rather was acting the part of an uncontrollably sodden former star to liven things up, at the producers' behests.