Sweet Nothings

We’re currently in the middle of the BFI London Film Festival, and I thought I’d better make an effort this year and catch a couple of films. This is trickier for someone who holds great stock in reviews, as I’m reluctant to pay to see anything that I know nothing about. And of course the really high-profile movies sell out instantly.  Still, I managed to nab tickets to the gala screening of Miral , Julian Schnabel’s new film centered around the Israel-Palestine conflict. This being from the director of the astonishing Diving Bell and the Butterfly and starring Freida Pinto, currently “hot”, as I believe they say in Hollywood parlance, after the success of Slumdog, I had quite high hopes. Not to mention that at £17.50 a pop, this gala screening would surely include a swanky drinks reception and the chance to mingle with slebs and that. Well, there certainly was a drinks reception, but not one to which the hoi polloi were invited. Furthermore, there were two screenings in ...

Please forgive the appalling self-indulgence - this is an article about my South African experience that was written for an in-house newsletter. I got far too carried away and failed miserably to stick to a reasonable word limit, and it will not be included in its full-length form in the newsletter because - the editor-in-chief assures me - it was just TOO DAMN HARD to cut it down whilst still doing it justice. That's what I choose to believe anyway. She also told me the word "gullible" isn't in the dictionary, how strange. So here it is in all its glory, and obviously this is copyright (c) Ben Gould, 2010 in case anybody was thinking of appropriating it (stop laughing at the back). Some sections may have appeared in similar form in blog entries at the time - deal with it. ........................................................................ My favourite World Cup-related memory is of a high school food technology lesson back in the summer of 1994, during wh...

So Peter Boatman, the bloke in charge of the firm who wrongly supplied unlicensed taser guns to the police, one of which was used in the final stand-off with the murderous yet bizarrely popular nutjob Raoul Moat, has just killed himself. The Daily Mirror's headline this morning? MOAT KILLS AGAIN FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE Brilliant. This in the same week as the segway chairman guy's tragic death in - but of course - a segway-related accident. It doesn't appear as if Mr Boatman killed himself with one of his own tasers - although to be fair, he might have tried that already. It probably just didn't work.