Ridley Scott
Who’s the sassiest 84-year-old in the world? Well, this week at least, it might be legendary director Ridley Scott — the man behind Thelma & Louise, Alien, Blade Runner and that “high-concept” Apple computer advert from the 1980s where, in my confused child memory of the time, Steve Cram hits a really big telly with a hammer.
As the side of any bus in Britain will inform you, Scott’s latest film is House of Gucci, starring Lady Gaga as the World’s Primary Source of Camp. As the film has had, let us say, “mixed” reviews, Ridley has been on the defensive, not least when the Gucci family released a press statement saying that the film had been made without their permission and that they were outraged that their relatives were being depicted as “thugs”. They then added: “Gucci is a family that lives honouring the work of its ancestors, whose memory does not deserve to be disturbed to stage a spectacle that is untrue.”
Most people would reply to such a furious statement with a bit of soft soaping, or one of those nonpologies where you go: “I’m so sorry if you feel I have upset you.” Scott, on the other hand, was more . . . brisk: “You have to remember that one Gucci was a murderer and another went to jail for tax evasion.”
It’s no “soz”.
Ridley Scott (again)
Mind you, the Guccis got off lightly. At a recent online press conference a journalist complimented Scott on how his recent film The Last Duel is “more realistic than [previous films] like Kingdom of Heaven or Robin Hood.”
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Scott’s reply? “Sir, f*** you. F*** you.”
I’m enjoying the sense that, once you get to a certain age, all the “media training” and “PR angles” and “campaign strategy” that celebrities have hammered into them becomes emotionally optional. It really is something to look forward to.
Victoria Beckham
This week’s “Most Misleading Headline” goes, comfortably, to Closer magazine, which took some meagre bones of fact and padded them to Santa proportions with a piece of whimsical lexical misdirection, thus: “POSH IS ‘TORN’ BY BROOKLYN’S BABY.”
What? Huh? Posh’s oldest son — “photographer” Brooklyn — has had a baby? When? Surely this would have been bigger news, given that it was a month-long news event when he uploaded a video to YouTube showing how to make a bacon sandwich. And this baby — Posh has been “torn” by it? How? Holy Jesus — DID IT COME OUT OF HER? Has Victoria Beckham secretly become the surrogate mother of her own grandchild, and the first we’re hearing about it is on page 12 of this week’s Closer — free with OK! magazine? THIS IS QUITE THE CASUALLY PRESENTED SCOOP, GUYS. Yes, I will read on to find out more about it! I shall make all haste!
“He showed off their ‘baby’ Christmas tree last week [on Instagram] as Brooklyn and fiancée Nicola Peltz revealed they had already been getting into the Christmas spirit,” the first paragraph ran.
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Oh.
The worst places to spend Christmas
This week two new festive destinations were opened up to us, the public, as Christmas holiday rentals. And my question to you is: which of these do you think would be the worst?
The first property is just outside Boulder in Colorado: a faithful recreation of the Grinch’s cave from the 2000 film How the Grinch Stole Christmas. How festive would you feel in a hole in a cliff, in which Dr Seuss’s Gollum-like mutant festers in the emotional gravy of “loathing of everyone on Earth”?
“Not so festive,” you say? Well, then maybe you’d prefer to rent the spacious mansion in Chicago in which the classic 1990 Christmas movie Home Alone was filmed! That’s much better, right? As you walk around the house, channelling the spirit of a bullied child inadvertently abandoned by his parents and forced to electrocute, poison, burn and boil alive two men absolutely intent on killing him, you’d definitely feel more “yule-y.” Although, TBH, I’d legitimately rather give birth in a stable in the Middle East after two weeks on a donkey than do either.
Nicolas Cage
As regular readers will know, one of this column’s self-imposed tasks is keeping note of all the times Nicolas Cage Has Been 100 per cent Nicolas Cage, the statistics on which are simple: it’s 100 per cent of the time. Marrying Elvis Presley’s daughter, owning seven castles, naming his son after Superman’s real name (Kal-El), accidentally buying a stolen Mongolian T. rex skull; living in “the Most Haunted House in America”; suing Kathleen Turner for alleging that he stole a chihuahua — he is 100 per cent Nicolas Cage, 100 per cent of the time.
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So, in a way, the news this week that Cage is to star as Dracula in the upcoming movie Renfield comes as something of a shock. How can it be that Nicolas Cage has never played Dracula before? Nicolas Cage had to be 57 before someone put him in a cape, told him to scream on contact with sunlight, and turn into a bat when stressed? Frankly, if any other industry had failed so badly on such a basic issue, there would be a government-led inquiry. Maybe Boris Johnson is his agent.
Quote of the Week
In terms of campy wisdom, the motto of Patrizia Gucci — who is being immortalised by being played by Lady Gaga, in a series of huge hats, in House of Gucci at the moment — is hard to beat: “It’s better to cry in a Rolls-Royce than be happy on a bicycle.”
Although it’s worth noting with these kinds of sayings that you’re far less likely to think this while actually being happy on a bicycle, and far more likely to think it while actually crying in a Rolls-Royce.
Sarah, Duchess of York
This week’s biggest “Love — nah” goes to Sarah, Duchess of York, who posited a pretty strong theory while being interviewed by Madame Figaro magazine.
“Sarah Ferguson says she is ‘the most persecuted woman’ in royal history,” as the MailOnline put it.
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Now, I don’t want to dismiss Sarah’s thoughts out of hand, but I feel that we should just quickly run through some other possible candidates here. Due diligence, and all that. So: Anne Boleyn was accused of being a witch who banged her own brother and was beheaded; Mary, Queen of Scots was beheaded; Catherine Howard was beheaded; Lady Jane Grey was pretty sans head by the end.
I mean, although I really, really understand how being called “the Duchess of Pork” would have stung quite badly, ultimately Sarah’s claim has to be countered with a very brisk: “Love — nah.”
Vishal Garg
Everyone has different Christmas inspo: for some it will be Santa; for others, James Stewart in It’s A Wonderful Life. Yet others have a more The Snowman vibe (really big Christmas Eve, drinking whisky and dancing with a penguin; sad dead puddle on Christmas Day).
On the other end of the spectrum, Vishal Garg — the chief executive of better.com — seems to have modelled his Christmas vibe on The Grinch. This week, despite having just secured his company $750 million in extra funding, he sacked 900 employees on a Zoom call with the words: “If you’re on this call, your employment here is TERMINATED.” Merry Christmas, everyone!
Garg, as you might expect, has “previous” — according to The Daily Beast website, in August he threatened one business partner with the words: “I’m going to staple you to a wall and burn you alive.” While in an email obtained by Forbes magazine he called another group of employees “a bunch of DUMB DOLPHINS” — which I think we can all agree is a wholly new, although slightly confusing world of insult.
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Is there a bright side to being sacked two weeks before Christmas? Obviously, as an incorrigible optimist, I’ve tried to find one. I presume sacking 900 people at the same time is a world record? If Norris McWhirter were still alive, they could all appear on Record Breakers while Roy Castle played Dedication on his trumpet — which would be nice. Sadly, however, McWhirter and Castle are dead, so I’m going to have to end this entry on an uncharacteristic low point. Sorry, guys. If it helps, I think you’re all lovely dolphins?
James Bond
“007 producer Barbara Broccoli insists ‘James Bond will be back’ . . . (they just don’t know how yet),” the story ran on MailOnline. “We’ll figure that one out, but he will be back. You can rest assured James Bond will be back,” Broccoli said.
Well! As I heard Phoebe Waller-Bridge got a million quid for her punch-up of the latest Bond script, allow me to cash in on a similar level, help out creatively, as is my humble duty as a British citizen.
As far as I can see, there are only a couple of viable options on the table. Bond either a) regenerates, like the Doctor in Doctor Who, into a new actor (this would mean establishing a backstory where he’s an alien, but you can fix anything with one line of dialogue. Maybe “The name’s Bond — James Bond. And I’m an alien.” That would totally do it); b) MI5 has cloned Bond as half-man, half-robot — which would also allow Q to install eg arms that turn into guns, or dry-ice that pumps from Bond’s bottom, if he needs to add an element of confusion to the room and make a quick getaway; or c) all of Bond’s love children — of which there must be dozens, of all races, and hopefully all called “James”, even the girls — start working for MI5. Some are Roger Moore’s kids, some are Sean Connery’s, some are Pierce Brosnan’s, and one is David Niven’s. TOTAL BOND-CLASH.
Then you’ve got a host of tasty family-dynamics stuff (nice nod to Succession) and an Avengers-like squad, to maximise casting possibilities and merch. Plus! Brosnan’s kids can keep singing really badly, like their dad does in Mamma Mia! — thus allowing a musical element too, which I feel the franchise could really enjoy.
To honour the project in the best way I know how, my fee will be $777,777,007, plus VAT.
Downing Street party
When is a party not a party? When it really needs not to be a party, in case someone gets in trouble.
Over the past week, the increasingly ludicrous statements from No 10 about whether or not there was a Christmas party, or parties, held there last year — when the rest of the country was observing a tight social lockdown — will have seemed very familiar to the parents of teenagers.
“Did you throw a huge party while me and Daddy were away?”
“I can absolutely assure you that I never said the words ‘come to a huge party at my house’, no.”
“Does that mean you texted people the words ‘come to a huge party at my house’, then?”
“Look, mother: I had a series of guidelines imposed on me — [whispering] by me — and I am entirely satisfied that I did not break them.”
On Tuesday the year-old footage of Allegra Stratton secretly rehearsing the government’s excuses became public. That she subsequently had to resign, tearfully, outside her house, seemed less like just retribution and more like she carried the can simply because she was the first official caught spouting this bollocks while unable to stop herself from laughing at it. The vibe was very clear: so long as you can keep saying this stuff with a straight face — or so furiously that you look, as Johnson did during a shambolic PMQs, like microwaved gammon — you get to keep your job. For now.
On Wednesday the Metropolitan Police bizarrely refused to investigate a potential breaking of the law, on the basis that there was an “absence of evidence”. Well, yes: there isn’t any evidence yet — because you haven’t started investigating it. Although I’m no expert in these matters, I’m fairly sure that No 10 must be one of the most CCTV-riddled buildings on the planet. Johnson isn’t the president of Iceland — you can’t just pop into his house whenever you want. There will be footage. And . . . WhatsApp? If there was, as alleged, a Secret Santa, then there’s a WhatsApp group out there that spent December 2020 squabbling over who “got” Priti Patel and which now reads, in 2021, as a very efficient list of everyone who should be talking to the police. But still, the obfuscation continues.
“I don’t need to get into the positions we’ve taken,” a spokesman for the PM said on Tuesday — which at least clarifies that one of the alleged “games” played that night was Twister.
Johnson has long used language in the way many of us use Christmas decorations — chucking on a load of brightly coloured balls to cover up truly ugly things. His other long-term tactic seems to be “having another child”. That box was ticked on Thursday, with the announcement that Carrie Johnson had given birth to their second child, and his seventh, or possibly eighth — a daughter. In this family I suspect that old tradition — of keeping copies of the newspapers from the day you were born — might be quietly dropped. After all, in yesterday’s Sun there’s a picture of Johnson, captioned “WFH again . . WTF!” The Johnsons probably won’t want to dwell on what was the highest-rated TV show at the time of birth, either — given that Ant & Dec are using I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here! as a nightly opportunity to jovially taunt Johnson with the prospect of a proletariat uprising: “Evening, prime minister. For now.”
Johnson seems to have achieved an amazing pop culture first: he’s made people furious for being too into Christmas. He’s done a “Reverse Scrooge”.
But then the true spirit of Christmas is bringing all mankind together — not just your pissed mates, and definitely not laughing about it afterwards.
