The sword-and-sandals epic 300 made an estimated $70 million last weekend when, despite hostile critics, it became the surprise hit of the season. A revamped Star Wars for our time — going back in history, not into the future — 300 is based on the comic book by Frank Miller about the Battle of Thermopylae, in which 300 Spartans (“Take no prisoners!”) prevailed against a million Persians.

The result is thrilling. It’s a taste of fantasy, heightened emotions, passion, power, good guys beat bad guys, moral values in a world gone cuckoo, an Oracle, over-the-top costumes from another era when women didn’t wear underwear, etc.

Expectations were encouraged by an enormous publicity campaign, including the 300 video game, the 300 lunch box (“Tonight we dine in hell!”) and 7in figurines of characters in the movie, from Gorga the Spartan Queen to the Mask of the Immortal.

Inevitably, one of my own movies, Tommy , comes to mind, with its striking masks of the immortal goddess Marilyn, whose costume in the movie was recently seen hanging on a rail in a costume-hire company, near the very costume worn by Sir Alec Guinness in Star Wars . That old heap of sackcloth made news the other day when it was sold at auction in London for around £60,000. Costumes, it seems, are highly prized items that often end up in museums or in the homes of well-off film fans.

Which puts me in mind of a very special costume I know of that also might fetch a few bob should it ever turn up in a sale room.

It was made for Ann-Margret for her leading role in Tommy — a sexy, silver crocheted catsuit.

One big moment in the film comes when she has a nervous breakdown, brought on by the realisation that she has commercially exploited her “deaf, dumb and blind” son. This knowledge of her guilt is triggered by a series of commercials on TV for which she is mostly responsible. She hurls a champagne bottle at the screen, which explodes, only to deluge her in a virtual waterfall of commodities — baked beans and melting chocolate to frothy detergent, in all of which she madly wallows. The scene climaxes with the now unrecognisable glamour queen of the silver screen dancing in rage, close to the smashed TV — too close !

In her well-acted delirium, one of her flailing hands hits a shard of glass. Instantly the baked beans are swamped in . . . ketchup? No, it is Ann-Margret’s blood. “Cut,” I say contritely, as our injured star collapses in a foaming swamp of baked beans and muddy chocolate.

At this very moment her husband arrives, looking like a million dollars, only to see the goddess he has groomed for years looking like the remains of a sundae, a bloody sundae.

Before he can react, and heroically disregarding my own pristine sartorial elegance, I throw the bloody but breathing carcass over my shoulder in a fireman’s lift, stagger with her to my Toyota, and drive her to the nearest hospital. Twenty stitches and 24 hours later, she was back on set singing: “Tommy, can you hear me?” What a trouper!

As for that foul-smelling, soggy catsuit, well, I was told it was incinerated, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it turned up in an auction one day. And with that spectacular history, heaven only knows how many thousands it would fetch. But one thing I do know — I certainly couldn’t afford it.

As for the gallant 300 , my guess is that all the costumes are being auctioned off at this very minute.

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