"Ah my boy! Sit down, sit down. Do try the Barolo. It really is most excellent. It reaches out and caresses the palate like a Taiwanese prostitute I once met. Lovely girl. Not much English unfortunately. Still she hardly needed it in her line of work.

Well I suppose Harry Potter fever had to reach its limit at some point. It seems that Japan is immune to the influence of the child wizard. It seems they prefer an animated film, ‘Spirited Away’ about a young girl whose parents are turned in to pigs. I can feel some sympathy with them because my own parents were pigs too. Terrible table manners, you know. Really shocking. Having them put in that rest home was quite the best thing for them. ‘Spirited Away’ has been sitting at the top of the Japanese box office charts for three months now. Lets just hope that the Harry madness doesn’t have a shelf life quite that long or I really will have to do somebody some damage.

I see Mike Leigh has been whinging again. Isn’t that man ever happy? His latest gripe is that people who fund films put too much emphasis on the script. He says they tend to forget that films actually only really come to life in front of the camera and during editing and that the whole tone of a film can be altered as a result. Of course, he’s right. But when you see some of the films that have been made recently you have to question if anybody even paid any attention to the script. British films at the moment are full of woolly characterisation, unconvincing plot twists and poorly conceived narratives. What sort of world is it when an acknowledged genius like Michael Winner can’t get any public finding, eh?

Talking of being unpopular Bruce Willis could teach me a thing or two. He failed to attend the UK premiere of his new film ‘Bandits’ because he didn’t really fancy the idea of flying just at the minute. Can’t imagine why. Anyway he thought that by sending a video message saying, "I love England. Thank you for supporting America" that would make it all right. Well it didn’t I’m afraid. The entire thirty second tape was jeered and booed by an obviously hacked off crowd. It probably didn’t help that a very pregnant indeed Cate Blanchette had managed to make it across the Atlantic. Oops. Doesn’t do much for your hard man image, eh Bruce?"