Everett sorry for calling troops wimps

ACTOR Rupert Everett has apologised for calling British soldiers "wimps" and suggesting they joined the army to torture prisoners.

The 49-year-old yesterday issued a lengthy statement apologising "without reserve" to the "many in this country, and hundreds and thousands of others across the world who have lost their brothers and sisters, their fathers and mothers to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and all the countless others," Britain's Telegraph newspaper reported today.

The apology came after he said during an interview to promote his new film The Victorian Sex Explorer – in which he plays the renowned explorer Sir Richard Burton: "In Burton's day they were itching to get into the fray.