Hollywood has known its fair share of megalomaniacs. Legendary movie moguls like Louis B Mayer and Jack Warner ran their studios like dictators, hiring and firing young starlets on a whim.

But, according to a documentary to be aired tonight, one film, made 35 years ago in the Arabian desert, had a real tyrant at the helm: Saddam Hussein.

The former Iraqi dictator, who was executed in 2006, financed a $30 million historical epic starring a host of British actors including the notorious hellraiser Oliver Reed, in a vain attempt to stir up national feeling and link his Ba’ath party to the Iraqi revolutionaires who overturned British rule in 1920.

Called Clash of Loyalties, the film, which told the story of the birth of modern Iraq, was shown at several film festivals in the early Eighties, but was never released and has lain forgotten in a Surrey garage ever since.