For Poor, Sickly Mags, A Smoking Lamp’s Still Lit
The British press is many things, but sympathetic isn’t one of them. The tabs pounced on Princess Margaret after news reports of the royal’s stroke broke.
The popular thing was to blame Margaret’s condition on her lifetime of smoking and drinking.
Here was the headline that ran in The Star: “The Fags (cigarettes) Catch Up With Mags,” Responded the Daily Mirror: “We Told Her to Give Up,” the headline screamed. And the accompany story: “Princess Margaret is paying for decades of wild living,” the newspaper said, noting additionally that the princess “swears like a trooper.”
As for the 67-year-old princess herself, she once admitted, “My vices are cigarettes and drink. I don’t see myself giving these up.”
Loose talk
Liam Neeson on starring in the forthcoming film version of “Les Miserables” (in GQ magazine): “One of the greatest novels in Western literature, and all everybody is asking is, ‘Do you sing in it?”’
And don’t anyone out there dare ask us Who he is
Roger Daltrey turns 54 today.
Doesn’t seem as his ‘Sphere’ of influence is shrinking any
Everyone’s a film critic: Here’s a quote from Boston Globe writer Renee Graham: “Director Barry Levinson, who’s getting big props for his prescient political comedy ‘Wag the Dog,’ but deserves a swat behind the ear for his dead-in-the-water undersea saga ‘Sphere,’ has signed to his next project.” The new project, by the way, is based on the Arthur Herzog novel “IQ 83.”
Hmmmm, is that anything like Good Paper?
Speaking of upcoming projects, Renee Graham reports that Oscar nominee Robert Forster (“Jackie Brown”) is set to star with the likes of David Thewlis, Fairuza Balk, Amanda Plummer and Roddy McDowall. The film, “Great Sex,” involves - believe it or not - “a washed-up action star who tries to unravel the mystery of his wife’s death with the help of a gay detective and a body double.”
Seems that news ‘facts’ would be a minimal requirement
Here’s what news coverage in the late 1990s has come to: Matt Drudge, whose “Drudge Report” has made him the first Internet media star, has signed to do a weekly TV show on the Fox News Channel. The following is a direct quote from the Associated Press story announcing the deal: “The network will try to make sure what Drudge puts on the air is factual, said Chet Collier, senior vice president of Fox News Channel.”
How about Dylan with the best penchant for mumbling?
Of the Top 10 Rejected Grammy Categories, David Letterman offers us: 8. Hanson brother most likely to rob a convenience store by age 25; 4. Best recording by a so-called friend of a former White House intern; and 3. Spice Girl most likely to get pushed in front of a subway train.
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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Compiled by staff writer Dan Webster