Spectator Life

Gina Lollobrigida, who died this week at the age of 95, was known in the 1950s and thereafter for the kind of beauty which drove Italian men to self-destruction; and for performances in films which seemed to define a scrappy, energetic, self-possessed Italian womanhood.   During her career, ‘La Lollo’ sculpted, took photographs, did a little journalism and maintained a chaotic personal and political life, in which both her husbands and her male executive assistants always seemed to be in their late twenties. But she ought to also be famous for something else: being the subject of one of the most exciting and vital early experiments in television, a great short film by Orson Welles.

‘Pitiful.’ That’s the verdict of Damian Green MP, acting chair of the digital, culture, media and sport committee, on the payouts that streaming companies such as Spotify and Apple Music provide to musicians. An update to the group’s Economics of Music Streaming report, published on Friday, calls on the government to take a ‘proactive strategic role’ to make sure Britain’s music industry – one of the few that truly is world-beating – gets the cash it deserves. With streaming now accounting for 84 per cent of UK recorded music revenues, its businesses model really matters.

One initially overlooked aspect of Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s ill-fated mini-Budget was the plan to restore VAT-free shopping for tourists. The scheme, which allowed non-EU visitors to claim back 20 per cent on their purchases, was scrapped in 2020 by then chancellor Rishi Sunak but looked set for a comeback. This was excellent news where I live – Japan – and throughout Asia, where holidays are short and shopping plays a big part in overseas trips. But just as tourists were writing up their lists and planning their itineraries, Jeremy Hunt pulled the rug from under their feet by cancelling the uncancelling before it had even reached Kwarteng’s promised consultation phase. Was he right to do so? Almost certainly not.

Are you suffering from SMS? Smart meter stress, that is. When we decided recently to accept our energy provider's offer to install a smart meter, I had no clue how anxiety-inducing the digital display on the little black monitor could be. Smart meters tell us (and our suppliers) how much energy we’re using, minute by minute. In theory they make life easier, helping us identify where we can reduce consumption and sending automatic readings so that we’re less likely to underpay or overpay on our bills. There are already 29.5 million smart meters installed across the UK, and by the end of 2025 every home and office in Britain will have been offered one.

This month our trivia-inspired tour of London’s postcode areas reaches NW, where Tim Burton snored, Madness caused an earthquake and Desmond Tutu asked policemen for directions even though he knew where he was going… The Renaissance hotel at St Pancras station had the first revolving door in Britain. It was installed at the Midland Grand (as the hotel was then called) in 1899, by the device’s inventor Theophilus Van Kannel. (The door itself – or rather a modern replacement – is still in the same spot, at the entrance nearest the road, rather than the main one set further back.) Another innovation was the Ladies’ Smoking Room, the first in Europe where women could light up.

The anticipation surrounding the release of a certain memoir today obscures a bigger question about the changing face of our publishing industry. Why does every Tom, Dick and Prince Harry think they can write a book these days? Figures last week showed the number of independent bookshops in Britain reached a ten-year high in 2022, thanks to a reading frenzy fuelled by pandemic lockdowns, the mushrooming of book groups and, perhaps most of all, the incessant, unstoppable march of the celebrity (not to mention royal) author. It is good news that there are now more than 1,000 independent bookshops in Britain and Ireland, the culmination of six years of growth at a time when other retail sectors have taken a battering.

‘Tears are not enough,’ ABC once sang defiantly - but these days, they’re more than enough for handsomely rewarded celebrities to assure us that they suffer like the rest of us, so please don’t hate them. Watching the BBC Breakfast presenter Sally Nugent - a 51-year-old woman - boo-hooing recently after watching a clip of some cute guide dogs, I sincerely wished that Lord Reith might rise from his grave and bundle the heaving hack under a cold shower. I’m just so bored by celebrity tears. Or take Frankie Bridge, the ex-Saturdays singer, an attractive young woman with an adoring husband and adorable children, who like her footballer spouse Wayne has a net worth of around £9 million.

Reading about the latest about the pathetic-sounding scuffle between Prince Harry and his older brother, I think I could tell the pair a thing or two about fraternal enmity. My older brother, another Harry, and I have not spoken to each other in more than 30 years. He was taller, blond and looked Germanic. I was shorter, brown-haired and looked Greek. He never made it at school, whereas I collected lots and lots of sporting trophies. My father named him an executive in his shipping companies, I was the odd man out. Harry had the largest house in the Hamptons and the poshest apartment in New York, whereas I sort of lived a gypsy life. Harry was not athletic, I excelled in sports and represented Greece in three of them.

One of the neologisms of 2022 was the phrase ‘nepo baby’. Short for ‘nepotism baby’, it was coined by younger people, the so-called Gen Z, to describe the syndrome of the increased attention and opportunity afforded to the children of celebrities – in practice giving them a leg-up into a career in modelling, acting or singing.  A curious aspect of the trend is that these newly cynical youths are only belatedly realising that many of the young stars in their firmament have famous parents: Lily Collins of Emily in Paris, for example, is the daughter of the rather-better-known-to-their-parents Phil.   But it’s only the term itself that is new.

The Offer (Paramount Plus) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iowLzO9-aew Even when you know the ending, this ten-part drama about the making of The Godfather, seen from the perspective of novice producer Albert S. Ruddy (Miles Teller), is outrageously gripping, gorgeously evocative of louche, cocktail-drenched late 1960s Hollywood, wittily scripted and superbly acted. Matthew Goode is especially watchable as superproducer Robert Evans. And this mostly true story has so many eye-popping moments – often involving the real mafia who at first resisted, then supported the movie – it feels more like the raciest and most implausible fiction. Reacher (Amazon) https://www.youtube.com/watch?

It would be fair to say 2022 was not a vintage year in cinema, reflected in UK box office receipts which remain around a third below the pre-pandemic year of 2019. That’s not to say there weren’t some enjoyable releases (such as The Banshees of Inisherin, Triangle of Sadness and The Northman) – but the biggest hits of the year consisted of superhero franchises and movie sequels (Top Gun: Maverick, Avatar: The Way of Water, Jurassic World Dominion, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, etc).

Literature presents many different ways of observing the new year. Much like real life, the options range from big parties to quiet stay-at-home gatherings… and existential crises. In Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, Meg and Jo March attend a New Year’s Eve party at the home of their family friend Mrs Gardiner. ‘Down they went, feeling a trifle timid, for they seldom went to parties, and informal as this little gathering was, it was an event to them.’ This is the moment that Jo converses with Laurie for the first time and sparks fly as they watch the New Year’s Eve party from their shared point of refuge in a small curtained recess.

Banshees of Inisherin: a magnificent cinematic metaphor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRu3zLOJN2c The In Bruges writer-director Martin McDonagh has made another film starring Colin Farrell and Brendon Gleeson which, this time, is set in 1923 on the tiny Irish island of Inisherin. Colm (Gleeson) and Padraic (Farrell) are lifelong pals and drinking buddies until Colm abruptly decides that’s it, friendship over, and he’s deadly serious. If Padraic so much as approaches him he’ll cut off one of his own fingers.

From the road Gainsborough’s House looks like it could be a thoroughly plausible restaurant in a town like Godalming or Chertsey, the sort of place where a prawn cocktail costs £15 and comes with most of a lemon in a white gauze satchel on a separate plate. The stout two-storey structure is Georgian, red brick and has a front door flanked by a pair of handsome Regency windows. Glance up the neighbouring side street, however, and you immediately see that something extraordinary has happened: there’s an enormous, ultra-modern, industrial-looking extension to the rear in brick and flint. Is it a carbuncle? I’ll leave you to decide, but yes, I’m confident it’s the sort of thing that would make King Charles choke on his fountain pen.

The Lord of Misrule is surely the jolliest spirit of Christmas past. He is certainly the best named. He used to gambol through cities and courts, churchyards and dining rooms, telling jokes, performing tricks and spreading good cheer. Society shook itself upside down at his coming, so knaves played at being kings, children became miniature tyrants and noblemen misplaced their manners (an exercise in which some, admittedly, needed little assistance). His origins can be traced back to ancient Rome, where each December masters and slaves swapped places for the festival of Saturnalia and engaged in various acts of tomfoolery while gorging on food and wine. These traditions survived the advent of Christianity and found their own expression in the Church.

On Christmas Day 1942, the German battlecruiser Scharnhorst, along with five destroyers, left its Norwegian base and headed for a series of Arctic convoys, the British fleets transporting material and support to the Soviets. The townclass cruiser HMS Belfast, used to escort the convoys through some of the most dangerous seas in the world, played a vital role in the Royal Navy’s clever game of bait-and-blast that resulted in the destruction of the Scharnhorst, a monster that had already sunk a British carrier and two destroyers. Belfast, the most powerful cruiser in the Navy at her relaunch in 1942 (she hit a mine in 1939 and needed three years of repairs), now sits in the Thames by City Hall, a visitor attraction operated by Imperial War Museums.