Category Archives: Celebrity Profiles

“More Vodka, please” goes up the shout. The shoes have come off. The feet are tucked under the star on the sofa in the press office of the National Theatre. The umpteenth liquorice roll-up has been smoked and as it’s … Continue reading →

The first fifteen minutes of Victoria Wood’s first ever sit com, the self-explanatory ‘dinner ladies’ seems a terrible disappointment. You’ve been here before. You know what a Victoria Wood joke sounds like. Sex, net curtains and a Gypsy Cream. Two … Continue reading →

When Saturday Night Fever became a global epidemic in the late seventies it gave fat office workers, thin shop assistants, in fact wage slaves the world over a path to stardom in their own heads. White flares were their flight … Continue reading →

Simon Russell Beale took up embroidery, he once told me, because everyone else at the RSC seemed to have a hobby and he thought he’d better get one too. It was a typical Russell Beale thing to do. A Clifton … Continue reading →

“Where’s the car?” said Shirley Bassey. “The car should be here. You shouldn’t have sent it away.” We have to walk from the Langham Hilton in Portland Place to the BBC, which is also in Portland Place. In fact if … Continue reading →

Raid your memories of Ronnie Barker and characters will tumble through your mind as if you were rifling through the picture archive at a casting agent. Butlers, businessmen, blusterers and stammerers, lags and lushes, old farts, young letches, tramps and … Continue reading →

Nick Park has to think how old he is. “I’m thirteeee…..um……eight. Thirty nine soon.” He started making movies when he was “Twelve…….um no…..thirteen.” He says ‘um’ and ‘er’ and ‘kind of’ quite a lot. And for a while when you … Continue reading →

Matt Damon smokes. A lot. And he drinks proper coffee. He’s a movie star but caffeine and Marlboro lights are not very LA. But then Damon isn’t. He is an East Coast boy, born in Cambridge Massachusetts, he studied English … Continue reading →