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In the UK in the 1990s, bodybuilding was a freak pursuit – the domain of weirdos who painted themselves with Ronseal and stretched tiny Lycra hammocks across acres of skin the texture of an Arbroath Smokie in an attempt to resemble Marvel’s The Thing. Nobody knew what a deltoid was. Or a protein window. Fit people were the ones who played a weekly game of five-a-side before the pub. Fake tan smelt of biscuits, and even Sporty Spice didn’t have abs.

When Gladiators first arrived on TV then, its stars were curios. We only saw people like them once a year, pulling a truck on The World’s Strongest Man or being gawped at by Clive James on Television. These demigods with 19 inch biceps and thighs the size of dustbins didn’t walk among us.

Now, it’s all change. Ordinary people “lift”. Protein shakes are sold in supermarkets, and...

Despite there being reports to the contrary, Princess Diana did not regret her infamous 1995 interview with Martin Bashir on BBC’s “Panorama” program, according to her biographer Tina Brown.

Veteran journalist Brown, who wrote the biography, “The Diana Chronicles,” in 2007, has a new book titled “The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor, the Truth and the Turmoil” releasing imminently.

In an excerpt from the book, published in Vanity Fair, Brown describes a meeting with British entrepreneur Gulu Lalvani who had dated Diana shortly before her death.

“I am told by Lalvani that Diana said she had no regrets about the interview and made clear that she had said exactly what she wanted to say on camera. (She even co-opted lines such as “There were three of us in this marriage” from her writer friend Clive James.) “She was pleased about it [the interview],” Lalvani confirmed to me. “She didn’t have...

A wealthy young woman escapes her tyrannical mother to fall hopelessly in love in this magnificent Hollywood melodrama

The towering 1942 romantic melodrama Now, Voyager, starring Bette Davis and Paul Henreid has been re-released, and its audiences will once again get swept away in the emotional tsunami created by Max Steiner’s orchestral score; the music’s almost outrageous grandiloquence matches the passion and absolute seriousness of the film, and underscores Steiner’s reputation as the Tchaikovsky of the Hollywood golden age. The film was a sensational success and its keynote scene where Henreid suavely lights two cigarettes at once – one for him, one for Davis – was much copied by saucer-eyed fans. Clive James confessed that he attempted it while trying to impress a girl on a date, only for her to say she didn’t smoke, leaving him looking like a walrus.

Charlotte Vale (Davis) is a young woman from...

Laura Fairrie’s family-sanctioned film praises the author’s personal courage, work ethic and feminism-lite but doesn’t delve very deep

Mega-selling author Jackie Collins enjoyed her big-haired and shoulder-padded heyday with raunchy books like Hollywood Wives, The Bitch and The Stud; now she is celebrated in this family-sanctioned fan-documentary praising her personal courage in the face of spousal abuse, her work ethic and her feminist-lite celebration of commercial success for sexually attractive women. It’s watchable, with some stinging rebukes for the male snobs – including, I’m sorry to say, Clive James, normally a great pop culture ally, shown here in a gruesome TV clip alongside Bernard Levin mocking Collins in her absence.

Collins grew up in the shadow of her more glamorous older sister Joan Collins, she had some cosmetic work done (which she was delighted with) and tried, like Joan, to crack Hollywood. When that didn’t work out,...

After the death of his father, a troubled handyman sets out to find who stole his prized hammer in this quirky black comedy set in a Belgian nudist camp

‘Nudity seldom looks good, even on the young” was a maxim of the late Clive James that came into my mind, watching this enjoyable if self-consciously quirky black comedy, the debut feature from Tim Mielants, who so far has been directing TV, including episodes of Peaky Blinders.

In a Belgian naturist campsite, deep in the woods, Patrick (Kevin Janssens) is a middle-aged man with learning difficulties who lives with his elderly parents. They own the site but must cooperate with a management board made up of the regular nudist campers.

Despite his characters generally enduring all kinds of ridiculous situations and performing insane feats of heroism, Dwayne Johnson has never played a comic book superhuman. That’s all set to change with Black Adam though, which will see Johnson transformed into the titular villain/antihero. The project has had a long road towards its shoot, hampered by his busy filming schedule and various scheduling conflicts within Warner Bros. But finally, that’s all cleared up now.

Jaume Collet-Serra is set to direct, with production beginning in July 2020 for a December 22nd, 2021 release date. And now, Johnson has given us yet another taste of how he’s going to look in the movie via Instagram. Check it out below along with the caption and some previous workout photos he’s shared:

The hierarchy of power in the DC Universe is about to change.

Training and prep for #BlackAdam has been a...

Clive James, a poet, television critic and former ITV presenter, has died after a decade-long battle with cancer. He was 80.

James passed away on Sunday at his Cambridge home, according to The Guardian. His funeral services have already taken place.

“Clive died almost 10 years after his first terminal diagnosis, and one month after he laid down his pen for the last time,” James’ agents said in a statement. “He endured his ever-multiplying illnesses with patience and good humour, knowing until the last moment that he had experienced more than his fair share of this ‘great, good world.'”

Also Read: Gary Rhodes, British Celebrity Chef and 'MasterChef' Host, Dies at 59

James was born Vivian James in 1939 in Sydney, Australia. He moved to London in the 1960s for college.

The prolific writer, who had also taken up poetry by this point, became the TV critic for The Observer in...

Clive James, the Australian-born, UK-based, television critic and broadcaster, has died aged 80.

James, well known to UK audiences for his dry wit, died on Sunday November 24 after a ten-year battle with terminal illnesses.

He was well known for hosting British series Clive James on Television, where he skewered shows from around the world, as well as Saturday Night Clive and a slew of documentaries including Fame In The 20th Century, which aired on the BBC and PBS in the U.S.

As well as a number of books and poems, James was a critic for The Observer newspaper as well as a travel writer.

He fell ill in 2010 and was diagnosed with leukemia and Copd.

A statement from his agents at United Agents, said, “Clive died almost ten years after his first terminal diagnosis after he laid down his pen for the last time. He endured his ever-multiplying illnesses with patience and good humor,...

Exclusive: All3Media has launched factual label Angelica Films with former BBC and Field Day exec Sally Angel.

The British production company will focus on producing documentary and factual programming for broadcasters and streaming platforms in the UK and around the world.

It is the latest non-scripted division for the Discovery and Liberty Global-backed production group, which also includes Betty, Killer Ratings producer Caravan, Maverick, Studio Lambert and Raw.

Angel spent four years as founder and creative director of Field Day Productions, which produced series including series including Inside The American Embassy for Channel 4. She previously worked for the BBC, where she produced series including Clive James’ Saturday Night Clive and Arena.

Jane Turton, CEO of All3Media said, “We’re delighted to be setting up this new label within All3 and really excited to have Sally bring her award-winning creativity and talent to head it up. She has a...

From Bono to Domingo, the stars line up to sing the praises of their late friend in Ron Howard’s heart-sinking documentary

Bland, incurious and passionless, this documentary about the great tenor Luciano Pavarotti is like a promotional video licensed by a team of copyright lawyers – and about as challenging as a Three Tenors gig at Wembley stadium. Pavarotti’s glorious voice all but drowns in a 114-minute montage of obsequious syrup.

Director Ron Howard certainly has an important lineup of interviewees: co-tenors José Carreras and Plácido Domingo, first wife Adua Veroni, second wife Nicoletta Mantovani, assistant, student and former lover Madelyn Renee – and also his New York manager Herbert Breslin and London promoter Harvey Goldsmith. Everyone is on their best behaviour, no one speaking out of turn about the great man or each other. Weirdly, the most interesting interview moments come in old archive footage of Pavarotti speaking to Clive James and Russell Harty.

Louisa Mellor Mar 26, 2017

Few robots are left standing in the latest, ultra-destructive episode of Robot Wars…

This review contains spoilers.

See related Marvel Studios movies: UK release date calendar Thor: Ragnarok - Natalie Portman's absence explained Guardians Of The Galaxy 2: 7 new international posters land

It’s somewhat in the lap of the gods, the entertainment value of any given episode of Robot Wars. If they smile upon the arena, the spinners spin and the crushers crush and we all have a jolly old time of it. Every so often though, things just never quite get going. Drive motors burn out, bots are immobilised after a single collision, and it all ends not with a bang but a whimper.

When that happens, it’s the job of the production team to string out the pre and post-bout interviews and make up for the thrills absent in the arena...

Bruce Beresford.

Bruce Beresford will shoot Ladies in Black in Sydney later this year, after securing production investment funding from Screen Australia.

The feature is based on Madeleine St John.s 1993 novel The Women in Black. The book was turned into a musical by musician Tim Finn in 2015, though the film is an adaptation of the novel, not the musical.

Set in Sydney in the summer of 1959, Ladies in Black is the story of suburban schoolgirl Lisa, who takes a summer job at a large department store where she works alongside a group of saleswomen who open her eyes to a world beyond her sheltered existence.

The film will be produced by Allanah Zitserman and Samson Productions. Sue Milliken. Beresford and Milliken have written the screenplay, and Morris Ruskin of The Ruskin Company will executive produce.

Beresford said he had been obsessed with adapting the book since being introduced to it by Clive James.

Den Of Geek Dec 14, 2016

As nominated by our writers, here are the books published in 2016 that we couldn't recommend more highly...

Closing the final page on the very best books leaves you with a single urge: to share it. We’re talking about the kind of books that make you want to follow strangers down the road, tugging at their elbow and saying “seriously, you’ve got to read this”.

Here then, is our equivalent of doing that. These are the books published in 2015 that our writers felt compelled to share. If there’s one that you feel similarly enthused about, please do recommend away in the comments section...

All The Birds In The Sky by Charlie Jane Anders

We live in what can charitably be described as interesting times. If you were feeling less than charitable, you might even describe them as dark times. And it has always been...

Amy Adams and Jake Gyllenhaal star in this superb second feature from the fashion designer turned film director – a pitch-black thriller to make you queasy with tension and regret

There’s a double-shot of horror and Nabokovian despair in this outrageously gripping and absorbing meta mystery-thriller from director Tom Ford, adapted by him from the 1993 novel Tony and Susan by Austin Wright. It’s a movie with a double-stranded narrative – a story about a fictional story which runs alongside – and it pulls off the considerable trick of making you care about both equally, something I think The French Lieutenant’s Woman never truly managed. Clive James once wrote that talk about “levels of reality” never properly acknowledges that one of these levels is really real. That probably holds true. But in Nocturnal Animals, these levels are equally powerful, and have an intriguingly queasy and potent interrelation.

Ford has surely raised...

Clive James is appalled at himself for spending the last months of his life watching box-sets. The 75-year-old presenter - who was diagnosed with leukemia in 2010 - has confessed he's addicted to watching episode after episode of TV dramas despite having a long list of activities left on his bucket list. He shared: ''It still appalls me the amount of time I've spent watching moving images. Film and then TV, and now box sets. If you're a grown man, indeed more than a grown man, if you're a man who has grown old to the point of death and you're sitting...

The winners of this year's British Academy Television Awards were announced tonight (May 10).

Sherlock, True Detective and Saturday Night Takeaway were among the lucky winners who went home with a BAFTA trophy at the end of the night.

Jason Watkins was awarded Leading Actor for The Lost Honour of Christopher Jefferies, which also picked up another award for Mini-Series.

Georgina Campbell won Leading Actress for her starring role in BBC Three's Murdered By My Boyfriend, which later lost out to Marvellous in its Single Drama category.

Stephen Rea picked up the Supporting Actor prize for his role in Hugo Blick's thriller The Honourable Woman, while Gemma Jones won best Supporting Actress for Marvellous.

The Graham Norton Show won the award for Comedy and Comedy Entertainment Programme, while Ant & Dec continued their BAFTAs success by winning both Entertainment Programme and Entertainment Performance for Saturday Night Takeaway.

Sherlock was awarded the public-voted Radio Times Audience Award,...

Broadcaster and author Clive James will be honoured with the BAFTA TV Special Award tonight (May 10).

Charlie Brooker is leading tributes for the 75-year-old at the awards ceremony, which is taking place at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London.

Line of Duty, Happy Valley, The Missing lead BAFTA TV Awards nominations

BAFTA will look back on James's outstanding contribution to television with a short film, presented by Brooker.

BAFTA chief executive Amanda Berry said: "Clive James is an incredible talent, and a great influence on many working in television today.

"A warm, witty and knowledgeable presenter whose programmes left a vivid impression on so many viewers, myself included. I'm delighted we will recognise his immense contribution to television at the BAFTA ceremony this evening."

The Australian-born Clive is known for his documentary TV series Fame in the 20th Century.

This year's BAFTAs will also see Jon Snow and Jeff Pope honoured.

John Howard has long regarded Sir Robert Menzies, Australia.s longest-serving Prime Minister, as his political hero.

So when producers decided to make a two-part documentary on Australian politics and society during the Menzies era, Howard readily agreed to collaborate and serve as the presenter.

The ABC has commissioned Howard on Menzies, one of six projects which received more than $2.7 million in funding from the first round of Screen Australia.s Broadcast program.

.With my fellow exec producer Stuart Menzies (no relation) we approached Mr Howard and put a case that we believed that a film from him based largely on his recent book, The Menzies Era, would be a unique insight into history, leadership and political power,. writer-director Simon Nasht tells If. .We needed to convince him that we were a team that could be trusted with presenting his viewpoint, not inserting our own. Then the ABC needed to...

Philip Bates is a writer at Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews - All the latest Doctor Who news and reviews with our weekly podKast, features and interviews, and a long-running forum.

Asking why Clive James is famous is like asking the meaning of life. No one knows. Clive James has opinions, and that is why he’s notable amongst the 8 billion or so people on this planet. In this infuriating clip from Clive James On TV, the British-Australian presenter talks to Sophie Aldred (aka Ace), Nicola Bryant...

The post Clive James Chats To Doctor Who & Blake’s 7 Stars in This Delightfully Patronising Clip appeared first on Kasterborous Doctor Who News and Reviews.

Count Arthur Strong is back, with Steve Delaney's comic creation having earned not just a second series but a promotion to BBC One.

The first series - broadcast back in 2013 - earned a BAFTA nomination but split the critics, with even Janice Hadlow - controller of BBC Two - describing the show as "Marmite".

Ahead of series two's launch, Digital Spy spoke to the sitcom's co-writer - BAFTA winner Graham Linehan - about the new episodes, the demise of TV criticism and why the studio sitcom is due a comeback.

Count Arthur Strong is back and now you're on BBC One - was that something you knew going in?

"We definitely didn't know about it beforehand. They showed the BBC a couple of episodes and they liked it, I guess. So yeah, that was kind of a nice surprise for us."

The general impression seems to be that BBC One...

Update: "Game of Thrones" is a major ratings coup for HBO (see Season Four premiere numbers below). So it's a no-brainer that the premium cabler would renew the series for a fifth and sixth season, which it announced today. Fans of the fantasy series can rest assured they'll be seeing new Got episodes into at least 2016. Earlier: The Season Four premiere of "Game of Thrones" got off to a big start April 6, nabbing HBO's largest viewership since the "Sopranos" finale. Roughly 6.6 million tuned in for the inaugural episode to the new season. Meanwhile, 11.9 watched the "Sopranos" closer in 2007. The previous highmark for Got was 5.5 million for an episode midway through Season 3. Below, our review of the new season: "Game of Thrones" is more realistic history than genre fantasy.  In the run-up to the launch of HBO's "Game of Thrones" Season Four, the great British TV critic Clive James has been...

There are some moments you don’t forget. I remember exactly where I was when I heard Kurt Cobain had died. I was sitting in my cubicle at Billboard’s New York office at 1515 Astor Plaza. I was the magazine’s talent editor. It was Friday, April 8, 1994. Holding his script in front of him and showing little emotion, MTV’s Kurt Loder broke the news to the world around mid-day. Cobain had died three days previous on April 5, but his body wasn’t discovered until the morning of April 8, alongside a shotgun. MTV practically turned into a 24-hour news station regarding Cobain’s death, showing clips and interviews with Nirvana over and over. It owned the story. This was a story for the MTV generation, not the main networks. Local radio stations served as outlets for fans to call in and express their sorrow, anguish, and shock. Though it’s only 20 years ago,...

Comedies from Matchbox Pictures, Princess Pictures, Working Dog and The Bondi Hipsters are among the highlights of ABC-tv.s 2014 schedule.

The drama slate includes the previously announced Anzac Girls (Screentime), which stars Georgia Flood, Antonia Prebble, Laura Brent, Anna McGahan and Caroline Craig in the saga of five young military nurses from Australia and New Zealand during the Gallipoli and Western Front campaigns; The Code (Playmaker Media), a political thriller about two brothers who stumble across information that people in power will kill to keep secret, starring Ashley Zukerman and Dan Spielman; and Old School (Matchbox), which features Bryan Brown and Sam Neill as a retired crim and ex-cop who solve crimes and unravel scams while avoiding the wrath of the police and the underworld.

Among the other dramas are Janet King (Screentime), a legal drama starring Marta Dusseldorp; crime thriller The Broken Shore (Essential Media); second series of The...

Hilary Mantel, Jonathan Franzen, Mohsin Hamid, Ruth Rendell, Tom Stoppard, Malcolm Gladwell, Eleanor Catton and many more recommend the books that impressed them this year

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw (Fourth Estate) is a brilliant, sprawling, layered and unsentimental portrayal of contemporary China. It made me think and laugh. I also love Dave Eggers' The Circle (Hamish Hamilton), which is a sharp-eyed and funny satire about the obsession with "sharing" our lives through technology. It's convincing and a little creepy.

William Boyd

By strange coincidence two of the most intriguing art books I read this year had the word "Breakfast" in their titles. They were Breakfast with Lucian by Geordie Greig (Jonathan Cape) and Breakfast at Sotheby's by Philip Hook (Particular). Greig's fascinating, intimate biography of Lucian Freud was a revelation. Every question I had about Freud – from the aesthetic to the intrusively gossipy – was...

It's a helluva weekend for legendary film folks celebrating birthdays. Yesterday marked Robert De Niro's 70th, and today, director Roman Polanski is blowing out the candles on his 80th. And while his controversial and colorful past means some won't be raising a glass to the filmmaker, when it comes to his work, he's left more than few films that will be remembered for years to come. But as always with Polanski, there is much to talk about when it comes to both his personal life and career. And that's just what Australian TV personality Clive James does with this in-depth and also sort of garish (that restaurant is kind of amazing) 1984 TV interview. Sitting down to break bread with the director, James dives right into Polanski's films, the death of Sharon Tate and more across one hour. This vintage piece of TV, which has found its way to YouTube,...

Jack Reacher; Love Crime; She Monkeys

Of the few physical descriptions offered in Lee Child's source novel One Shot, one fact is clear – the hero of this ongoing avenging angel series is very big (Clive James's phrase "a condom stuffed with walnuts" has been invoked) and very tall. Not so Tom Cruise, who brings many qualities to the title role of Jack Reacher (2012, Paramount, 15), of which both heft and height are notable only by their absence. Replacing physical bulk with bankable box-office power, Cruise ambles through this oddly inert actioner as the eponymous, ghost-like figure, (re)appearing from nowhere after a clearly culpable crackpot is arrested following an apparently random daylight massacre. Teaming up with Rosamund Pike's glamorously attired defence lawyer, whose district attorney father (Richard Jenkins) has sent several prisoners to their deaths, Reacher follows the money to the Zec, a milky-eyed maniac with a very...

As journalists we are, of necessity, all about what's happening Right Now. So it's nice to take a step back and lose ourselves in stories that have stood the test of time. Tell us what you think of our vintage choices - and let us know what you're reading. Caitlin Keating, News Assistant Her Pick: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy I'm reading Anna Karenina right now for the fifth time. It's one of my all-time favorites. I am constantly quoting Tolstoy. "If you look for perfection, you will never be satisfied." If only more people understood how true that statement is,...

The artist daughter of the critic Clive James is emerging as a force in her own right, says Vanessa Thorpe

Clive James will one day be known simply as "Claerwen James's father", the television critic and author has predicted. On the eve of his elder daughter's new solo show of paintings, however, she points out wryly that the day has not arrived quite yet. "The subject of my father does still come up from time to time," she said.

"My strategy has been not to tell people, so for a long time nobody had the faintest idea." Her striking portraits, many of young women and girls, have been attracting growing attention for James, who was spotted by her gallery soon after leaving art school.

Sad and powerful, the faces that James paints are "not cheerful", she concedes. "I am basically a cheerful person, but it is true my paintings do...

Britain's Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall are holding a reception to honour Australians and New Zealanders. The royal couple will today (06.02.13) be taking the time to meet and greet outstanding personalities who have received or been past finalists of national achievements in the UK and congratulate their success. Recently-titled Young Australian of the Year in the UK - Rhodes scholar Rebecca Richards - is one of the many guests attending the event, along with previous winner Yasmin Sewel and further nominees and recipients of the UK New Zealander of the Year prize. Previous winners and short-listed personalities of the Australian award include author and TV personality Clive James, London bombing victim Gill Hicks and...

A world of cruelty, where men are cold-blooded and women cold-hearted … The BFI begins a Roman Polanski retrospective – with extended runs of Repulsion and Chinatown – that showcases the director's fascinating pathology

Any hopes that the BFI's forthcoming retrospective – its second in less than a decade – will turn attention away from the glum key terms of Roman Polanski's life (the Kraków ghetto, Manson, statutory rape) back to the riches of his work are based on false reasoning and certain to be dashed. To watch Polanski's films is to be reminded of what produced their dazed brutality, those early experiences of the oppression of the weak that stole his innocence and distorted his sense of things. If ever there was a body of work on intimate terms with cruelty and domination, and steeped in a vision of men as cold-blooded and women as cold-hearted, this is it.

When, in Polanski's first film,...

Arnold Schwarzenegger's autobiography – like his Terminator alter ego – lacks wit, charm or self-awareness

The sleep of reason breeds monsters, and one of the most alarming creatures dreamed up by our irrational culture is the stogy-puffing bogey Arnold Schwarzenegger. He is the spirit of the age made flesh, and his careers as athlete, actor and politician have dramatised its most disturbing paradoxes – the showdown between technology and human nature, the reduction of art to self-marketing, the transformation of government into a branch of showbiz. His surname, translated, means "black corner": he is the dead end at which the evolution of our species and the development of our society have abruptly arrived.

Arnie's very existence is a vindication of the Third Reich's values. Born in 1947 in defeated Austria, he is, as he once admitted, an unrepentant admirer of Hitler's oratory, and while still a teenager – after experimentally crashing some tanks during his military service,...

Talk to anyone working in the field, and you will hear that the rise of branded entertainment represents one of the most interesting and important shifts in the world of commercial creativity.

But those same people will also tell you that in Australia, we aren’t much good at making it.

The rhetoric from the industry was largely that we’re sadly lagging behind our Us and UK contemporaries.

Anyone you speak to who has created good work will tell you it happened against the odds.

Brave clients are seen as a rarity, even from those with a portfolio of case studies across brands. Successes are related like war stories, tales of victory snatched from the jaws of defeat.

As the curator of the upcoming Festival of Branded Entertainment, I approached the task of sourcing content, case studies and clients with some trepidation, wondering how much scraping the bottom of the barrel lay ahead.

Total Recall – My Unbelievably True Life Story merely confirms our suspicions: that nothing brings Arnie more pleasure than himself

Oho! What gift is this from the celebrity gods, floating down on to the Lost in Showbiz desk? Why, it's Arnold Schwarzenegger's 650-page autobiography, Total Recall – My Unbelievably True Life Story. While LiS is dismayed to lose its long-running bet that the title would be I Told You I'd Be Back – And I Am!, the subtitle does provide consolations with its pleasing similarity to Gary Shteyngart's tale of a plucky immigrant in America, Super Sad True Love Story, but Arnified. Thank you, celebrity gods! Tools down, everyone – it's a Lost in Showbiz book group special.

The first thing to say is that this is not a celebrity autobiography. Trust me, I have a degree in celebrity autobiographies from TMZ.com University, and this is not a contribution to that noble genre.

Commercial Radio Australia has secured Us personality Sharon Osbourne as the Australian Radio Conference keynote speaker. The famous TV host and music manager follows on from last year’s guest, Kelsey Grammer.The announcement:

Well-known and controversial businesswoman, music manager, television host and author, Sharon Osbourne, will be the special guest at this year’s Australian Radio Conference and Awards, to be held in Sydney next month.

Well -known for the reality television show, The Osbournes, which won an Emmy for Best Reality TV Show, Sharon has most recently been a judge on the X Factor UK and America’s Got Talent, as well as a guest on Celebrity Apprentice in the USA and currently is co-host of The Talk.

Sharon will speak on stage at the Radio Conference about identifying and promoting talent, how she sees the future of media and entertainment, and her own diverse life and career.

Seven News is under growing pressure over the question of whether it intruded into the privacy of a mother whose daughter had died in a quad bike accident.

A family friend has published a detailed post questioning the network’s version of events in a move that makes it increasingly likely that the complaint may be among the first tests of the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s new privacy guidelines.

As Mumbrella reported yesterday, Linda Goldspink-Lord claimed that Seven News invaded her privacy through use of helicopter shots of her with her daughter’s body.

She accused the network of causing “pain and harassment” and claimed that a journalist was on private property. Her comments on the Seven News Facebook page were deleted by the network.

Yesterday Seven apologised for the deletion with Chris Willis, director of news at Seven News Sydney saying it had been done in error.

Clive James has dismissed reports that he is near death after battling leukaemia for two years. The broadcaster was reported to have made the suggestion in a BBC Radio 4 documentary which will air on June 23. The Guardian's Merope Mills spoke to James's agent on the phone, and wrote on Twitter that the critic had dismissed the reports as "bollocks". "The interview which Clive James gave to the BBC sounds much less doom-laden than it does when transcribed by the press," their correction read. "He is in fact in reasonable shape and looking forward to years of work." (more)...

Clive James has stated that he is losing his battle with cancer. The legendary Australian broadcaster was diagnosed with leukaemia in 2010, and has said in a moving statement that he is "getting near the end" of his life. "I've been really ill for two and a half years," he told BBC Radio 4's Meeting Myself Coming Back. "I was diagnosed with leukaemia then I had Copd which is a fancy name for emphysema and my immune system packed up. And that's just the start. "I almost died four times and I swore to myself if I can just get through this winter, I'd feel better. And I got through the winter and here it is a lovely sunny day and guess what, I don't feel better. "I'm getting near the end. I'm a man who is approaching his terminus. My tragedy now is that I'm so ill I can't get...

Helena Bonham Carter may not have nabbed an Oscar in 2011, but the Academy Award-nominated actress will be bringing home an honor of a different sort in 2012, courtesy of the Queen.  The King's Speech star, who portrayed Queen Elizabeth in the Oscar-winning biopic (and went on to receive an Oscar nomination for the role herself), was awarded with a Cbe (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the Queen's New Year Honors list, published Saturday, according to the Hollywood Reporter.  Bonham Carter was among an elite group of entertainment industry professionals who received the coveted Cbe honor, along with comedian Ronnie Corbett, Australian entertainer and writer Clive James, Who Wants to...

London – Helena Bonham Carter is among the high-profile names from the entertainment world to garner a plaudit in the Queen’s New Year Honors list, published Dec. 31. Bonham Carter, who portrayed Queen Elizabeth in The King’s Speech, has been made a Cbe in the list. Also honored with a Cbe is comedian Ronnie Corbett and the Australian born entertainer and writer Clive James. Television presenter Lorraine Kelly and Sky News war reporter Alex Crawford, both working on the small screen in very different circumstances, are made OBEs. Peter Bazalgette, the veteran television executive who brought Big Brother to

read more...

Those honoured in arts include 'the finest living English poet', novelists, actors and the man behind the Big Brother format

The arts awards in the honours list have a distinctly literary feel, with the poet Geoffrey Hill, elected last year as Oxford's professor of poetry – a post uniquely voted for by the university's alumni, given a knighthood, the novelist Penelope Lively made a dame, and the novelist Rachel Billington and the writer Clive James awarded CBEs.

Hill, 79, who had an academic career, has been described as the finest living English poet. He previously said: "Difficult poetry is the most democratic because you are doing your audience the honour of supposing they are intelligent human beings. So much of the popular poetry of today treats people as if they were fools."

Should he and Peter Bazalgette, the independent TV producer credited with popularising the Big Brother reality show format, be knighted...

In 1973, I did an Esquire column about screenwriters, focusing largely on the first writer-director of the talking era, the mercurial Mr. Preston Sturges, who got so fed up with seeing his scripts mangled by inferior directors that he made an unprecedented deal with Paramount: he would direct his own screenplay for one dollar. The superb result was the brilliantly satirical political comedy, The Great McGinty, which won him an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. This was followed by seven more comedies over the next four years, each one of similar vintage quality (except for The Great Moment, which was somewhat wrecked by studio interference in the cutting), an amazing outburst of creativity that remains unchallenged to this day; six further masterpieces that have stood the test of time and changing tastes: Christmas in July, The Lady Eve, The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, Hail the Conquering Hero, The Palm Beach Story,...

Back in the early 1970s, I had a monthly column in Esquire called “Hollywood”, and one piece I did concerned the low state of movie quality at the time (things have only gotten worse), especially in light of the glorious past. To make my point, I arbitrarily picked 1939, the year I was born---along with a number of my illustrious colleagues (like Coppola and Friedkin)---and ran through the amazingly prolific array of movie classics released in that last year of the 1930s, including such seeming evergreens as Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz. A few months later, in a huge spread in Life magazine, Richard Schickel wrote a similar lengthy rundown of pictures from 1939, but he declared it unequivocally The Greatest Year of American Movies. This worked its way into the culture and is now the establishment viewpoint. I often wonder what would have happened if I...

Clive James has revealed that he has been diagnosed with leukaemia. The 71-year-old Australian chatshow host, critic and poet, who has a wife and two children, said that he is currently working on a poetry notebook but admitted that he is not sure if he will be "around" to see it published. James told the Australian Literary Review: "In January 2010, in Cambridge, I got hauled in for kidney failure. I was immediately diagnosed for everything else as well, including several lung diseases and a version of leukemia that is supposed to develop slowly but in my case couldn't wait to get started, mainly in my lungs." He also described it as "irksome" (more)...

International broadcaster Clive James has been diagnosed with leukaemia.

The Australian-born critic, poet and writer, 71, has revealed all about his health battle in a letter to the editor of The Australian Literary Review.

He writes, "In January 2010, in Cambridge, I got hauled in for kidney failure. I was immediately diagnosed for everything else as well, including several lung diseases and a version of leukaemia that is supposed to develop slowly but in my case couldn't wait to get started, mainly in my lungs."

He admits his condition has weakened him so much of late that he has had to put several projects on hold, including a second volume of his book Cultural Amnesia and a book of poetry.

Thirty years ago, when Taxi zum Klo was shown in several cinemas under club conditions without a BBFC certificate, I was lined up to give evidence for the defence were it to be prosecuted for obscenity. My services were not required and the film now stands as a milestone in the history of both free speech and the representation of gays in the cinema.

What helps it retain its vitality is that writer-director Frank Ripploh (who died of cancer in 2002 at the age of 52) treats his life as "a normal, tired, neurotic polymorphous-perverse teacher" in Berlin with the same witty, generous, self-denigratory honesty as Clive James and Simon Gray brought to their heterosexual exercises in confessional autobiographies.

Taxi zum Klo is a truthful film, revolutionary in its time, about love, the pleasures of promiscuity and the fears of the fading of desire. Shot just before the great Aids scare of the early 1980s,...

Bob Ellis on the Oscar-winning The King’s Speech (available on DVD this month), Biutiful, The Company Men and the passing of Sidney Lumet.

The Oxford scholar Peter Levi had a theory that Shakespeare was popular because he had only one theme. A man or a woman, he said, is given a task to which he or she is unequal, and comedy or tragedy follows. Thus Hamlet, an adequate joshing student, is a poor avenger, Brutus, an adequate stoic philosopher, a poor generalissimo, Othello a fine generalissimo but a dumb older husband of a young white wife, Malvolio a shambolic wooer, Viola a lousy transvestite, and so on.

This theory well fits The King’s Speech and explains its international popularity. We all of us as children have been made to recite, or sing, or perform acrobatics on stage, and have dreaded the anguished humiliation the experiment was bound to bring to us.

Reports Heatworld: Yes, the man famously described as a ‘condom full of walnuts’ has set out on his most dangerous mission yet, joining the lethal and cut-throat world of fashion. He is going to launch a range of clothes called Sly Inc next year. Sylvester told Men’s Week: “I thought the time is now. I’ve lived a life where I know what has worked and what hasn’t worked. Clothing is the first step to building a character. “Rocky at the end of the day is a love story, while Rambo showcases the other side of masculinity, he is a loner. So the line will offer looks for ‘the rebel and the gentleman.’” First, a correction, Heatworld. It was Arnold Schwarzenegger, Not Sly, who was described as a “condom full of walnuts” by Clive James. That is basically the best description of something I’ve ever heard, so...

Adrian Chiles is to front his own chatshow. The Brummie broadcaster - who currently fronts 'Daybreak' alongside Christine Bleakley - has been given the opportunity to host 'That Sunday Night Show' in an ITV1 bid to turn the 43-year-old star into the UK's answer to Australian king of chat Clive James. In addition to holding exclusive chats with celebrity guests during the show - which is to be piloted in December - football pundit Adrian will also look at the week's current events. An insider told The Sun newspaper: ''It will be built around Adrian's personality, so it will have humour and be thought-provoking. ..

Adrian Chiles has reportedly landed his own ITV chatshow. The 43-year-old, who joined the network earlier this year, will host That Sunday Night Show as bosses hope to turn him into "the next Clive James", The Sun reports. The show, which is to be piloted next month, will see the Daybreak host take a look at the week's current events and feature (more)...

If you've been following our barrage of Scream 4 news then it will come as no surprise to hear that Neve Campbell's character Sidney Presecott is an author in the new film with a book titled, "Out of Darkness: A True Story of Survival." Today thanks to Clive James we get a high-res image of the book cover. Check it out after the break...

Update and Correction: This cover was created by a member of the Scream-Trilogy website (StuandBilly) to replicate the cover. Still an amazing job.

Source: StuandBilly

Original post blogged on b2evolution.