tfieLEECH
Sucking the blood of popular entertainment
I If the pinnacle of journalism is Watergate and the revelations of Deep Throat. then the Leech is strictly Shallow Gulp. Arriving incognito and indirtymac through the side door of a screening of Inside Deep Throat. a docwnentary about Linda Lovelace and the porn film which brought down the Nixon government. the Leech was disappointed to discover that 91 -year- old Mark Felt. former second-in- command of the FBI. had declined to appear in this excessively seminal movie. Instead. he preferred to reveal his role as Bernstein and Woodward's mole in the Current issue of Vanity Fair. No sense of theatre or just worried about people seeing his geriatric bits bouncing about?
I HaVIng untangled this tingle. the Leech travelled to the Hay Literaiy Festival. Not to hear Paul McCartney. Goldie Hawn or Ken Dodd. Nor lesser writers like Ian McEwan. Margaret Atwood or Jeanette Winterson. No. the Leech was getting all Hay Feverish for that man With the nation's balls in his manicured hands. a comedian for whom the d0uble entendre has always been the mot juste. Julian Clary. Reading from his auto- biography. A Young Man '3 Passage. 1 - Clary revealed he'd been on Valium and Bohypnol when he made his , infamous ioke ab0ut listing Norman Lamont. scandalising many of those present all over again. Indeed. ls? seasoned -' readers were left imaginatively scarred
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from trying to poke their mind's eye out. one old lady remarking that ‘a cocktail of whi/x and horse tranguilisers' couldn't persuade her even to be seen With the former ion; chancellor.
I Upmaiket literary iitag Zenib/a often made the l eech retch ‘.'Jllfi the preteiitiOusness of its glossy pages. But they easily wiped clean and you got a free pen with the siibsciiption. Financial difficulties forced the coffee table favourite to suspend publication for six months. but at Hay it relaunched With a party. haying found a novel way to cut costs. Cult transvestite author JT LeBoy has contributed an aiticle on shoe designer Manolo Blahnik for no payment. bar a pair of high heels from the trumped-up cobbler himself. The Leech offers no similar guarantee of sycophantic praise for clothing manufacturers but is prepared to haggle.
I Ever the necrophiliac. the Leech reckons Zenib/a's best ever article was lan Bankin's 'Illl(}r\.’l(}‘.‘." Willi Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. though it failed to get to grips With the elementary question of the wretched Young Sherlock Holmes filin. enough to set any dead author
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meant it as an aCt 0; charity. I
rotating in his graxe. Like Doyle.
Rankin has been ciitrcised for keeping the sex in his novels at a stibtextiial level. leading one ciitic to note that Inspectoi .John Rebus ‘is as big a sexless freak as that ()i‘mll‘.) addict in the deerstalker. Why can't he txigger‘ Watson and be done ‘.'.’l’.ll it? Reader‘s Will be heaitened to hear tl‘a'. 7ra/nspott/ng director {)éif‘l“, Boyle has written two new Hebus scripts. for which he's made the lnspectci ‘ivrcie sexually active'. This next/s (:aii‘e as a relief to Edinburgh’s fictional criminal community. .'.‘.’li(?.'" maintains that Rebus goes .(i! easici on then‘. a-vhen he's get up on the right side of someone else's bed that owning.
' the unpreteCted annals OF D C JaCKson
~' She interpreted it as a barter
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Movie trailers are all about give and take: you give them 30 seconds, they take away every reason to go see that particular movie. While this cliffhanger ruining tendency could be viewed as a bad thing, what it does, in fact, is give you sufficient information to make rational choices at the box office. Never shall you accidentally stroll into a Chris Tucker/Sandra Bullock/Jackie Chan kung fu rom-com again.
HAW? SUMMER SPORTS
Now that the football season has closed in a shattering climax of little dramas all across the main and little stages, what‘s left for us during the balmy British summer months other than post-season stress disorder? Tim Henman being humiliated at the quarter final stages of Wimbledon? Again. Colin ‘Monty’ Montgomerie losing the plot at the Open? Again. Some cricketers somewhere? Only a three-month no holds barred BBC strike can save us.
CopYright 2005 D C JaCKson
It seemed ChUrliSn to contradiCt her...