‘Game Of Thrones’ Clive Mantle Loses Ear In Hotel Fight

Life painfully imitated art for “Game of Thrones” actor Clive Mantle on Sunday.

Mantle, whose character Greatjon Umber loses two fingers to a liege lord’s pet wolf in the first season of the HBO series “Game of Thrones,” lost part of his ear during a heated exchange with a hotel guest at the Newcastle Travelodge in Newcastle upon Tyne, England.

According to the Huffington Post, the trouble began at about 4:30 a.m. when Mantle, 55, lodged a noise complaint about a fellow traveler, described by his agent as a “drunken Scotsman” who had gotten too rowdy. Mantle’s agent said that after complaining to the guest for making too much noise, the 32-year-old man flew at Mantle, pinned him to the ground and bit off a piece of his ear.

“On the first occasion, he’d said ‘can you keep the noise down please?’” Mantle’s agent, Bryn Newton said. "He was very polite. It was 4:30 in the morning and he was very tired.”

"He returned to bed but when he went back outside there were two drunken Scotsmen,” Newton said. “He said to them ‘If you don’t keep the noise down I am going to call security.’”

That’s when , according to Newton, the guests “set about him.” "One of them bit the top part of his right ear off. It was savage. Fortunately, someone heard the commotion down the corridor and came out to help him and called hotel management,” he added.

Luckily for Mantle, the piece of ear was recovered and surgeons at nearby Royal Victoria Infirmary successfully managed to sew it back on.

"He is very shaken and shocked by what has happened, you don't expect this kind of thing to happen in a hotel," a spokesperson for Mantle told the BBC. "The part of the ear that was bitten off was found and sewn back on. Mr. Mantle said the police, ambulance and hospital staff were amazing."

Mantle, who recently finished a run in the play “The Ladykillers,” had been set to continue touring with the show but had to cancel several appearances due to the incident.

"Clive doesn't yet know when he will be able to rejoin the cast and feels he must mention the ambulance crew, police and hospital staff who were all superb,” the play’s publicist Laura Myers said. "Fiery Angel, producers of 'The Ladykillers,' are horrified by the events of Sunday morning and are doing everything they can to ensure Clive has a speedy recovery."

Mantle is reportedly scheduled to see a specialist in Oxford on Tuesday to monitor his progress. The man accused of attacking Mantle has been charged with wounding with intent. He is due to appear before magistrates in April.

Although the ear biting attack left the actor shocked, it’s hardly the first such incident in the past year. In November 2012, two retired Australian priests reportedly got into such a heated argument over a parking spot that one bit off the other’s ear.

According to Newser, the heated altercation between 80-year-old Father Thomas Byrne and 81-year-old Father Thomas Joseph Smith took place in their Perth apartment complex. Smith later claimed that he got so lost in the fight that it wasn’t until afterward, when Byrne reminded him to retrieve something off the ground, that he noticed that a piece of his ear had been severed.

About 10 months earlier, “Celebrity Big Brother” winner Paddy Doherty had a piece of his ear bitten off during a street fight in Manchester, England. The Daily Mail reported that Doherty, 52, got involved in a bare knuckle fight with his 21-year-old cousin, Johnny Joyce, which ended only when Joyce bit off Doherty’s ear.

And just two months before Mantle lost part of his ear, another Englishman lost his ear in a pub attack. According to the Hull Daily, 28-year-old Reza Qanbery was working a shift as a doorman at Old Zoological on New Year’s Eve when an aggressive patron grabbed him by the throat and bit his ear. The man was arrested and charged with wounding with intent.