Thought I’d watch “Ocean’s Thirteen” and lasted one hour forty before switching off. A more pretentious, almost impossible to follow, ridiculous and irritating film it would be hard to find. I’ll never know the outcome and couldn’t care less. A stellar cast of big names adding up in the end to sweet f.a.. I’m surprised I had the patience to last one hour forty and didn’t turn off sooner. Whoever said of a certain actress that she ran the whole gamut of emotions from A to B could very well say the same of Mr Clooney, possibly the most vapid actor ever to disgrace the silver screen. Guess the female fans all go for his soft charm and looks but, as the old saying has it, looks ain’t everything.
Friday again already. Friday’s we get the Athens News and The Daily Mail. Ever since, after forty odd years of readership, we decided to boycott The Sunday Times that gave less and less in the overseas editions for the same price; the straw wot broke the camel’s back was withdrawal of the culture section, I get the Mail on Fridays for the film, theatre, and book reviews. Unfortunately last week I missed out on Friday’s paper and took Saturday’s instead. Goodness gracious me as Peter Sellers might have said, talk about purple prose! Full pages on the return of Peter Mandelson to the labour cabinet and a seat in the Lords at the invitation of Gordon Brown. Enormous headline on the front page – ARISE LORD SLEAZE and referred to as “disgraced Prince of Darkness!” On pages 6 and 7 another huge headline MANDELSON BACK IN TRIUMPH (PART 3). I presume the Mail’s legal advisors didn‘t think the appellations awarded Mr Mandelson as libellous but, if I said of someone that they were malignant, malevolent, mendacious, an odious discredited creep and a cancer on British life I would more’n likely be issued with a writ. There is another full page on 9 giving a history as to why Mr Mandelson has been called all these names. Actually he should sue for hurt feelings, isn’t that what everyone does these days? And he could be awarded millions then he wouldn’t have to cheat and lie about his finances in order to buy another multi-million pound home.
With the enormous headlines the Mail is sprouting it is heading closer and closer to The Sun. Someone aught to tell the editor that we can read.
Discovered a chirpy journalist by the name of Deborah Ross (styled the non domestic goddess – that sounds like a title the old music hall performers used to use – “the comic singer and grotesque dancer”) whose column “The real truth about all the stars I’ve never met” was great fun. But this week, sorry Deborah, it’s back to Friday’s paper.