During the filming of The VIPs in 1963, one of the many crappy movies Richard Burton made for money, he drank half a gallon of cognac in one day. But what might have killed most people was nothing to Burton, who had built up an extraordinary tolerance for alcohol over the years.

When the Burton/Liz Taylor circus moved to Mexico the next year for the shooting of The Night of the Iguana, both were drinking heavily. In Burton's case that meant two or three bottles of spirits a day and Taylor regularly got through over a bottle a day herself. They could be seen propping up the bar in their hotel most nights, where the joke was that the the recipe for a Burton cocktail began: “First take 21 tequilas...” This was prompted by a day on the set in Mexico when Burton drank 21 straight tequilas and then dived into the sea in pursuit of a shark.

Burton's capacity for booze was extraordinary. His regular day began with up to a dozen beers before lunch, after which he would switch to the hard stuff. Burton had drunk heavily since he was a kid, but in the decade from the mid-60s to the mid-70s his consumption peaked. Yet he could still function. When the director would shout ‘action!’, the slurring would stop and he was usually word perfect. Indeed, much of his best work was done through an alcoholic haze.

It was the same with Peter O'Toole and Richard Harris. O' Toole would easily get through a bottle of whiskey in a day and sometimes a lot more.

Harris was worse. At his alcohol peak in 1967 he made a rubbish movie in Hollywood with Doris Day called Caprice and the boredom made him drink even more. At the time he was consuming two bottles of vodka a day plus a bottle each of port and brandy; he collapsed on set and was rushed to hospital. He survived, but only just. Like O'Toole, Harris was also prone to go on benders, frequently ending up in a police station in a foreign city days after he had told his wife he was just popping down to his local in London for a pint.

All of this – and the exploits of Oliver Reed, the only non- Celt among the four – is revealed in a new book called Hellraisers: The Life and Inebriated Times of Richard Burton, Peter O'Toole, Richard Harris and Oliver Reed. In comparison with “four of the greatest hellraisers that ever walked, staggered or fell into a pub”, today's supposed wild men such as Colin Farrell and Russell Crowe are like altar boys.

Oliver Reed once drank over 100 pints of beer in 24 hours and then did a horizontal handstand on the bar (see above!). When Burton was shooting The Spy Who Came in From the Cold in Ireland, one scene required him to down a glass of whiskey. The props department brought in the usual substitute, flat ginger ale, but Burton waved it away. “It's only a short scene, won't need more than a couple of takes. Bring me some real whiskey.” In fact, getting the scene right took 47 takes, so he drank 47 whiskeys.

Once, when he was shooting Under Milk Wood in the 70s, Burton told the director “You're lucky I'm sober.” Define sober, said the director. “Never more than one bottle of vodka a day,” replied Burton, and he wasn't joking. When doctors operated on Burton three years before he died (still in his 50s), they found that his spine was coated with crystallised alcohol.

Although the drinking of the four hellraisers attracted most attention during the shooting of their movies, their alcohol-fuelled exploits during their “resting” times was even more explosive. They were all a bit insane. Reed in particular had a mad streak – one of his favourite shock tactics on social occasions was to whip out his tattooed penis, calling it “my mighty mallet”.

The explosive unpredictability that Reed had was matched by Harris who, when he was drinking heavily, frequently used to rush into traffic and attack passing cars with his bare fists. This sounds funny, but it could be terrifying.

All four hellraisers regularly got into fights, mainly in bars, where they would be challenged by guys trying to make a name for themselves. Reed and Harris were particularly violent. Burton had come up the hard way in Wales and was always ready to throw a punch. Even the foppish O'Toole had a very tough background and could look after himself

The alcohol-driven excess of their lives continued for several decades, until eventually their bodies gave up. Of the four, O'Toole is the only one left, perhaps because he did not drink as much as the other three, and he can't drink any more: it would kill him.

Reed went out with a bang – after a day's filming on Gladiator, he had 12 double rums, an unknown number of whiskeys and then an arm wrestling match in a bar – before he died in his sleep. But the other two, Harris and Burton, were both unable to drink before they died, their systems in bits from the years of boozing.

Looking back now, it all seems a bit pathetic. In the end, as the book reveals, there was nothing admirable about their exploits. Michael Caine, who was there at the time, says they were simply “drunks”.

So why did they do it? Even a cursory look at their backgrounds throws up clues... three of them were from poor families, they all had issues as kids and they all were insecure and needed approval and success.

The camaraderie of the pub provided an escape. Burton said that he drank so much “to burn up the flatness... that one feels when one goes offstage”. O'Toole said it was like an anaesthetic that “diminishes the pain… and I did quite enjoy the days when one went for a beer in Paris and woke up in Corsica.”

Harris said: “I adored getting drunk and I adored reading in the papers about what I had done the night before.” Reed said simply: “You meet a better class of person in pubs.”

Hellraisers: The Life and Inebriated Times of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O’Toole and Oliver Reed by Robert Sellers ispublished by Preface at €21.45