INQUIRER: Messing – now 74 and retired, living with his wife in North Wildwood – wasn’t supposed to trail Dame Liz. He initially was hired to serve as extra security detail, despite retiring from the police force a week before, after 23 years on the job. But Taylor’s regular bodyguard was sent off to New York due to a drug problem. The star saw the 6-foot-3 Messing while rehearsing and hired him to protect her during her time in the city. He ended up doing so for six weeks. Messing said that Taylor was afraid of the paparazzi and crazed fans, including one who followed Taylor all over the country just to present her with a bottle of perfume. Taylor stayed at the Bellevue-Stratford and kept her pet parrot in her room. Messing recalls that the bird possessed a wide vocabulary of curse words. “She always had her parrot with her,” Messing said. “The parrot would just be cussing inside the suite. She would take him on the stage and I would always wait for the parrot to start cussing on the stage, but it never did.” Lex Carlin, longtime manager of the Forrest Theatre, remembers that parrot, too. Taylor’s limo would pull up outside the theater on Walnut Street, he said, and she’d exit with a cigarette in a holder in one hand, and the parrot on her shoulder, posing for the throngs of fans with cameras. MORE