Bring on the long frocks
Blogger of the Year PETER RHODES on an age of elegance, an unseen Lord Grantham and why your baking-powder submarine never worked.
A READER writes: "Judging from the chaotic way that David Cameron has introduced screening at airports, can we assume he doesn't know his Sars from his Ebola?"
THANKS for your continuing suggestions as to why my new blue woolly socks should produce copious quantities of blue belly-button fluff. The latest relates: "I have long considered this question of belly-button fluff to be one of life's great imponderables. In my own case, it never seems to match whatever cardigan I'm wearing."
OLDER readers may recall the media doctor Vernon Coleman who came up with the only medically-approved explanation I have ever seen. He blamed belly-button fluff on the Belly-Button Fairy.
PRESS night at Stratford, where there were almost as many celebs in the audience as on the stage. Waiting at the main door for a friend was Alison Steadman who plays such powerful roles (Pamela in Gavin and Stacey, Mrs Bennet in Pride and Prejudice) that you assume she is a big woman. In real life she's a tiny, delicate thing. David Warner and Dame Eileen Atkins were also present. But the best-known member of the audience was the unassuming middle-aged chap in a suit with unbuttoned shirt and heavy, unflattering specs who sat quietly in the third row of the stalls. He looked like a rather dog-eared provincial solicitor but he was actually Hugh Bonneville, aka Lord Grantham of Downton Abbey. Bonneville, a friend of director Christopher Luscombe, must have known his presence would have distracted from the play (Love's Labour's Lost) and so he delivered a master class in not being noticed. I bet there were people within a few feet of him who had no idea he was there. What a pro.
LOVE'S Labour's Lost is set, like the earlier series of Downton Abbey, in the Great War, so here's another chance to enjoy the flowing fashions of an elegant age. I'm surprised the popularity of Downton hasn't brought long dresses and hats back into fashion. Bonnie & Clyde ( 1967) put a generation of mini-skirted girls into midi-dresses almost overnight.
WHAT does David Cameron, promising tighter EU immigration rules, have in common with Ed Miliband, promising to take good care of the economy? Their mouths utter all the right words but their hearts just don't seem to be in it.
I HAVE just dabbled with fame for a few hours. I was invited to take part in something called Runaview, "a hive of witty and satirical debate" jointly organised by the comedian Dom Joly and one Dominic Spencer. It was to be a new website "where the key issues of each day will be discussed by those who understand them best." I was judged to number among "1,000 of the UK's most expressive and informed personalities." Wow. Anyway, I went to the Runaview website, found a post containing the C-word and, prude that I am, decided this was probably not for me. A few hours later Dom Joly announced he was pulling out. The witty hive is a couple of bees short.
I REFERRED recently to the baking-powder submarine, given away with cereals in the 1950s. A reader writes: "Mine never worked." I bet the problem is that, for some long-lost reason, these little plastic toys were also known as baking-soda submarines. Yet baking soda doesn't react with water; you have to use baking powder. Shun those hives of witty and satirical debate. If you want to know how to make a toy work, 50 years after you threw it away, this is the column for you.