sunday times column week eleven

Harry Potter and the Philosopher Sharon Stone.

My eleven year old daughter started sobbing last night and I have only myself to blame.

When I asked what was wrong she told me she was crying because the Harry Potter books were coming to an end. I told her that she could always re-read the books and that JK Rowling would write other books. She shot me an angry look and said that I didn’t understand, that she had grown up with these characters and that this would be the last one.

When the books originally came out I got her the tapes to listen to before she was even able to read them.

By book two or three I remember looking in to check she was asleep and seeing her seven year old face wide eyed in terror at whatever awful thing was threatening to destroy the boy wizard. As a parent I’d wanted her to share my love of reading but on the other hand I did worry she was going to turn grey overnight.

I ordered the book on Amazon to be delivered to my office but we are away on holiday an hour and half north of LA and I’m now hiding newspapers and changing the TV channels so she doesn’t stumble across a spoiler before she has the chance to crack open the book.

I have seen all of the movies and found them hard going so it was with trepidation that on Saturday I got three tickets to see fifth movie at Mann’s Chinese theater on Hollywood Boulevard, where every inch of pavement has the handprint of a movie star from Charlie Chaplin’s little feet to Lassie’s pawprints.

To pick up our tickets, we had to fight our way past Johnny Depp, or actually three Johnny Depps, all look-alikes, one Edward Scissorhands, one Willie Wonka and one from Pirates.

I actually enjoyed this one and the story engaged me so much that I was almost unaware of the buff Daniel Radcliffe and his blinky performance. For me the real stars of the movie were Imelda Staunton her smirking cruelty a reincarnation of Blessed Margaret Thatcher and Alan Rickman whose pained ennui at having to be a teacher was something I could identify with.

On Monday night I was one of the few here who watched the Posh Beckham reality show, Coming To America. If that was the best of the six hours they had hoped to air, I hope that the editor was given an extra muffin basket for having sat through all of it.

At one point to throw the paparazzi off the scent, so that she could surprise David with a new watch, she put a wig on a blow up doll to act as a decoy. As the seconds inched by I wondered if they had somehow got the two mixed up on the show and if I was still watching the doll.

At one point she goes to a Hollywood café to confront Perez Hilton, a startled little munchkin who runs a Hollywood gossip website called TMZ, named for the thirty mile zone around the centre of Hollywood. Watching her reminded me of Vinnie Jones’ interview on our show when he said that David was only coming here so he could help carry her bags.

This weekend Tom Cruise is flying back from filming in Germany to throw a welcome party for Posh & Becks at LACMA, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, a massive art deco museum literally across the road from where I live. He’s invited six hundred of his closest friends and I’m only sorry I’m out of town this weekend.

The LA times this week has photos of Tom in the role of the German officer who was behind the failed attempt to blow up Hitler in the last days of the Third Reich. He is in Wehrmacht uniform complete eye patch and trying his damnest to look all Prussian and tough, but somehow he just reminds me of a camp Peter Sellers character.

There has been controversy in Germany where they are not fans of Scientology and they refused the film makers permission to use certain key locations if they insisted that Tom play him. I can only assume that they are anxious to protect the good name of the Nazis.

The TMZ website has just announced that Craig Ferguson is now dating Sharon Stone. They often get it wrong, like the time a Scottish tabloid announced that Craig was engaged to Laurel Canyon, which was in fact the area in Hollywood where he was living, rather like reporting that he is dating Newton Mearns.

From a link at the end of the story I came across an internet chat strand about Craig and Sharon Stone, the comments made me laugh out loud. They ranged from “dude, I thought he was gay!” to “I can believe it because I heard she likes funny, clever types and even considered moving to Ireland, to meet people like Dylan Thomas.”

None of them seemed to worry that Dylan is first of all Welsh and perhaps more importantly has been dead for over fifty years. Dude, whatever !