IT'S the stuff of legend and has long since disappeared down the internet’s memory hole. But way back in 2004 BC (Before Covid), a Hollywood heartthrob strolled into The Bear in Crickhowell and wet everyone’s whistle with a round or two of the good stuff

Or at least that’s how it may have happened.

Reality often has a habit of getting in the way of a good story, but what we do have at the tips of our fingertips like elusive and mercurial butterflies that are almost impossible and sometimes inconvenient to pin down, are the hard-boiled facts.

It’s a fact that in 2004, Depp was filming scenes at Tretower Court for his lead role in Laurence Dunmore’s The Libertine.

In case you’re not familiar with the movie that Depp regards as one of his finest, it’s based on the life and times of John Wilmot, also known as the 2nd Earl of Rochester.

Wilmot was a decadent but fiercely gifted and flamboyant freethinker who ended up riddled with syphilis and dying young. But not before he had frequented a lot of pubs and boudoirs.

Depp plays him like a man possessed and gives a powerhouse performance that has often been overlooked in favour of his more popular and palatable roles.

Yet the point, if there’s one to be made, is that while on location, Depp took a break from filming and visited The Bear in nearby Crickhowell and was said to have cried, one would like to think in the voice of Captain Jack Sparrow, “Drinks all round!”

What a touch! A soul hanging around the particular watering hole on that particular day could lunch off the story of when they downed a few on Depp’s dollar for many a moon.

The story of how Robbie Williams came to stay at the same hotel for a few months in the 1990s following his split from Take That, we’ll save for another day.