Short People

In his ridiculously macho series of books, Lee Child makes his hero Jack Reacher a 6' 5" brick outhouse of a man. One of those books is being turned into a film. The lead role is to be played by Tom Cruise who is so small you can stand him on the palm of your hand. Some fans have objected. Lee Child says it's the power the actor brings to the role that is important, not his actual size.
I once went to a production of Othello at the National where the title role was taken by Paul Scofield and Desdemona by Felicity Kendall so perhaps it's not that ridiculous.
Apparently there's a wartime adventure coming out soon in which, I can exclusively reveal, Rommel will be played by Billy Connolly, Monty by Justin Bieber and Churchill by Whoopi Goldberg.
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I told you so. In today's Sun there's a piece on how the current shark episode off St Ives matches the film Jaws and, yes, they've used 'you're gonna need a bigger boat.' Apparently the Mirror used it the day before. I think I'll keep count.
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You can tell a lot about a newspaper by some of the bylines of its contributors. Tonight on the way home I read an article in the Evening Standard by Caramel Quin. I quid you not.
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Picking my son up from school last night after cricket, I noticed a particularly smart visiting team practising by the main road. What was noticeable was that they were all white and most had blonde hair. Now that's a sure sign they are not from round here. My son plays cricket twice a week and there is not a single side anywhere in a 25 mile radius that includes the East End and Essex where at least half the team are not Asian. Without Britain's Asians, I doubt whether cricket will survive as one of our major games past the next 10 years.
It turned out the visiting school with all the blonde kids was Eton.
Strangely I have known, and still do, several Old Etonians over the years, including a couple I've worked with at The Sun, most notably Paddy Hennessy who is now Political Editor of the Sunday Telegraph and a marvellous man.
I used to tease him for being posh and he used to tease me for not being posh as we covered the industrial beat together in the late 80s. I once questioned him about growing up away from ethnic minorities to which he pointed out there were several at school with him. I found this hard to believe but he reminded me he was at school with various Crown Princes from Dubai, Brunei and Kuwait plus sons of chiefs from a variety of former colonies, thus maintaining his ethnic credentials.
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The trouble with people like rent-a-gob radio presenters like Jon Gaunt and James Whale and the whole TalkSport culture is that the loudest argument tends to win, even when it's clearly wrong. I saw porky Gaunt laughably reviewing the papers with Eamonn Holmes on Sky this week. Sitting alongside was some autocutie they have on to break up the monotony. I think her name is Charlotte and usually she doesn't have much of an opinion on anything. But just this once she did. The blokes were being all blokey and talking about what a travesty it is that the government is not going to bring back weekly bin collections, completely ignoring all the rational arguments made by rational people that we don't really need a weekly collection, that wheely bins mean you don't get an invasion of rats - particularly if food scraps get picked up regularly in the recycling and so on. Charlotte wanted to make a point on this but was completely shouted down by a fat Irishman and a fat Brummie who had no logical statistical evidence to make their argument. They just 'knew' it was wrong.
I've always thought Holmes is a bit of a tosser ever since an incident between him and a good mate of mine at a GMTV party some time ago which I'll go into on another occasion. Nothing I have seen from him since then has changed my mind, including him and his equally unappealing wife recently done up like Burton and Taylor as Anthony and Cleopatra for one of the most ridiculous photoshoots I have ever seen.
Look it up. It's hilariously naff.
We'll be back after the break....Solly