OK magazine, the essential celebrity almanac, has long held the belief that Katie Price and Peter Andre are very interesting people indeed. That every detail of their life is of clataclysmic importance to its readers.  Not a week goes by without one or  other smiling sincerely (him) or pouting (her) from the shelves of newsagents across the land.

Even when this famous celebrity divorced couple are not flogging their latest wares … er… sorry I mean speaking sincerely and from the heart…. OK magazine, desperate to feature them somehow … anyhow…. will comb ever twitter feed, every Pap pic unitl they find any snippet of gossip.  They will then string this globbule of nothing much, out over several pages, dare I say it, much embellished.  Several weeks ago the magazine of champions excelled itself.  With a two pager that promised much in a headline that screamed: ‘Falling in Love again?  They’re ready to move forward together’.

My breath, readers, was well and truly bated.

The article then started – and here I quote:

‘Not since Reagan sat down with Gorbachev has there been such an  unexpected reconciliation as the one between the once-embittered exes Katie Price and Peter Andre.  And like the leaders of America and Russia, the former reality show lovebirds have brought hope to the world that true love never dies’.

Now before I go on, you probably want to read that analogy again. Go for it, I’ll give you a second. ….. Finished? Speechless?  Good- here goes then.

Shall we start at the bit where the  writers liken any type of thawing in Price  / Andre relations to the Cold war.  This is done, by the way without a trace of irony.  These guys, in my opinion, genuinely believe that the glamour model and the man who brought us ‘Insania’ will take their place in the history books! “Ah yes,” crusty academics looking back will say sagely – “The Noughties…..  9/11…. The Arab Spring…. the Fall of Saddam  and a bird with big wangers gets off with an aussie bloke in the celebrity jungle.”   If this is the way to earn your place for posterity, then I’m immediately ending my quest to find a cure for the common cold and  instead shall wear very little and fall out of night clubs a lot, much much easier!

Am I the only one who remembers the 80′s?   When we went to bed each night never knowing whether a crusty soviet leader would choose this moment to  push a button sending us into certain Armageddon?  It was a decade of 4 minute warnings, drama docs depicting the hell that nuclear fall out will play on the complexion and leaflets suggesting that the only way to survive the mushroom cloud was to prop a door against the wall and sit underneath it, eating baked beans – I’m sceptical at how long survival like this would have lasted actually – but we clung to these crumbs,  as all around us the Soviets threatened to bomb us to kingdom come and we reciprocated with similar unneighbourly fist waving.

The notion that Price and Andre has decided to occasionally speak on the phone about the raising of Princess and Junior, is a good idea.  It’s grown up even.  Well done Katie and Peter.  But unless I have missed something, I simply cannot place it as comparable to Glasnost.  I’m trying, really I am.  But a slight thawing in a celebrity divorce versus a reconciliation between superpowers, thus  ending  the most frightening forty year period of recent history….  erm!!!

And moving on to the second part of the paragraph,

“And like the leaders of America and Russia, the former reality show lovebirds have brought hope to the world that true love never dies”
My feeling is that the  ”Prandres” or “kapet” as I like to  call them, with their incescant sniping,  played out in public, haven’t bought the phrase true love never dies to mind.  But the suggestion from OK seems to be that Reagan and Gorbachev were also going for this admirable goal. And here I’m quite certain on the facts.  No matter how cordial their entente eventually became, I don’t recall them ever declaring their love for each other.  I’m not sure they even got as far as a kiss and a cuddle.  That really would have been gossip!

So well done OK, a mash up of world recent history which at its heart, was just a story about Katie Price picking up the phone to check if Pete still wanted the kids at the weekend….  You’ve got to love it!  NOT

A year ago on wednesday I was taken to lunch at Le Manoir aux Quatre Saisons to celebrate a birthday which I would coyly call a milestone (not 50).

It was pouring with rain, we arrived in a car that had moss growing on the roof and I fell over in the car park due to optimistically vertiginous heels.  Yet, it was the most wonderful day, a total surprise – to the extent that every time we passed a sign for Le Manoir on the motorway – my venerable benefactor sent me into the glove compartment looking for biros.  Three times this happened and each time I fell for it – it never crossed my mind that someone negotiating three lanes of motorway in a clapped out polo through driving rain with an over excited birthday girl beside him, didn’t really have the spare time for writing his autobiography.

It was  without doubt the most luxurious delicious dining experience that I have ever had.  The service was amazing, the location breathtaking.   I simply can’t imagine I’ll ever get a better amuse bouche, three courses with wine and coffee and petit fours than that – and for me at least there was such a thing as a free lunch (did I remember to thank you soldier?)

I tell you this, because last week I went to a similarly priced restaurant in London Town to celebrate a friends milestone birthday (not 40).  And it was, how can I put this eloquently, total rubbish.

Paramount at the top of Centrepoint has a 365 degree view across London – except the night we went when a snowstorm rendered a white out.  This was not Paramount’s fault – however, everything else was.

I was the first to arrive, and a waiter took my coat and then left me hanging around at the bar. Which was absolutely freezing and looked like the vestibule of a premier inn, all purple hard sofas and light wood,  only  with slightly better dressed people. I managed to negotiate a glass of wine with some difficulty, the barman not speaking a word of English.  We eventually managed in a kind of pidgeon French, or possibly fluent Serbo Croat. I didn’t understand a word – though in fairness, when it came, it wasn’t bad.  Mind you at £12, it should have come with a side order of gold bars.

The food was  late and cold.  There was virtually no choice and my monkfish was so tough that I  I think it  had last drawn breath sometime before the coronation.  Or perhaps that was when they started cooking it.  A waiter dropped a parsnip on my shoulder – yes actually onto my shoulder and no, I have no idea how that was possible.  He then began dabbing a fairly dirty looking cloth in the vague region of my upper arm. I asked him to stop, quite nicely and made a mental note that if I ever came to this restaurant again, unlikely though it is, I would probably make better provision and wear a tabard, or possibly even overalls.

All our main courses came at separate times – the birthday boy didn’t get his until the rest of us were nearly finished.  And that included my prolonged and frenzied sawing  aforementioned monkfish.

The bill when it eventually came, was slightly less than Le Manoir but still slightly more than a newish pergeot 106.

Interestingly I was wearing the same vertiginous heels and I fell over at the bar thanks to the slippery Ikea floor.  This time, I didn’t laugh.

To cap it all, snow stopped trains on the way home and I had to walk from White City – muttering gypsy curses under my frozen breath – although I did have quite a fun snowball fight with two drunk aussies on Shepherd’s Bush Green.

I wouldn’t bother with Paramount – the view, when not obscured by blizzard can’t be worth the price – the London eye is much cheaper and if you want to go for a proper posh dinner  - go to Le Manoir – you can probably borrow the moss encrusted Polo if you ask nicely  to avoid getting caught in the snow….

In June 2011, I became the travelling companion of one of TV’s most temperamental and feared figures; an icon who created havoc during a twenty year reign of TV terror.  Yes, I escorted Emu (of Rod Hull and … fame) from a loft in Birmingham back home to Rod’s family in Sydney, Australia.

I was making a documentary about the late great Rod Hull as part of ITV 1’s Unforgettable series.  As a child, Emu had been as big a part of my life as jam sandwiches and John Craven.  An anarchic creature, who bit first and wrestled the great and the good to the floor later.  From the Queen mum to Parky, no one was safe from his fearsome pecks.  When Rod died, in 1999, Emu quietly disappeared. And I was curious to learn what had happened to Rod’s badass bird…Speaking to the Hull family (now based in Sydney), I discovered that Rod’s psychotic sidekick was languishing in the loft of a family friend in Birmingham and they were rather keen to have him back.

As I was due to fly out to Australia to film with the Hulls, I suggested that I should escort Emu home. They agreed, arrangements were made and I eagerly awaited the arrival of the most precious and potentially dangerous piece of luggage I was ever likely to travel with.

The day before I was due to fly, a courier delivered a large, battered yellow bag to the production office.   A hush fell over the room.  Word had got round as to the identity of my travelling companion.  Twenty five jaded TV professionals gathered round.  Between us, we had probably met and been underwhelmed by every major celebrity of the past decade. Many icons in the flesh do not live up to their onscreen images.   But as I unzipped the bag and we caught a glimpse of blue and orange raffia, you could have heard a pin drop. Necks were craned and eyes were on stalks as I gingerly I stuck my hands into the bag.

Nothing could have prepared us for Emu; well over six feet from the plastic plumage on top of his head to the large feet, with legs longer (and more yellow) than any supermodel.  He was sewn into Rod’s famous safari jacket with a false plastic arm wrapped round his body, making him extremely heavy. Beady eyed, hard beaked, the face, even inanimate, displaying the well known mixture of disdain and distemper. Back from the dead, after twenty years, Emu was extraordinary and terrifying in equal measures

We stared in awed silence. Several of us admitted to a lump in the throat at coming face to beak with such an integral part of our childhoods. Then Emu, along with a small repair kit that Rod always travelled with including a small pot of yellow paint and touchingly a photo of his family, was repacked into a brand new sturdy suitcase and padlocked (for our safety as much as his, a colleague remarked).  He was ready for his very long journey home.

The following afternoon as I queued at check in at Heathrow,  it suddenly struck me. I about to put an icon into the hold of a plane and trust that it would emerge intact sixteen thousand miles later.  And not only that, what the hell was going to show up when this thing was x rayed?  A large life like bird with a very realistic fake arm attached.  I am sure there are more suspicious packages, but at that moment I couldn’t think of any.

I threw myself on the mercy of the check in official.

“Did you pack the bags yourself madam? “

“Er..yes, but I really think I should tell you what’s in this one.  Do you, by any chance remember Rod Hull and Emu?  Ah Good, well I have Emu in this bag and he’s attached to a fake arm and I’m taking him to Rod’s family in Australia.  “

Several searching question and a brief glimpse of the precious cargo later, the good people at British Airways were satisfied that I was not a danger to myself, a fantasist or high on hallucinogenics and deemed Emu worthy of VIP, as in Very Important Puppet, treatment.  Yes, Emu got an upgrade.  A British Airways official arrived to personally and reverentially escort Emu to the first class hold. Apparently there’s a pecking order for luggage as well as for people.. If I was hoping for similar star treatment, I was wrong. One glimpse of my boarding pass assured me, that celebrity perks were not handed out to the unknown travelling companion and I slunk off to cattle class.

I spent the long flight  with my knees by my chin, easing my pain by drinking too much economy class wine and darkly imagining Emu, yellow feet up in first,  being offered massages, champagne and a trip to see the captain.

Twenty four hours later, at 5am, we were reunited in baggage reclaim at Sydney airport and headed for security screening.  As an Aussie customs official picked up the bag and put it onto the conveyor belt, I went through the same schtick again….

“Er…. Do you remember Rod hull and Emu? “

The Aussie barely glanced up. Not an eyebrow was raised as the image of twisted, crumpled puppet and lifelike limb fetched up on the X- ray monitor, though the Angel Delight and Gravy granules requested by Rod’s eldest daughter was regarded with suspicion and required lengthy explanation.

After three riotous days filming, I finally handed Emu over to Rod’s family in a hotel suite.  Toby, Rod’s eldest son, had developed an act with a new Emu and agreed to put Rod’s puppet on and animate it, so that I could film the original bird.  Filming it inanimate was strictly forbidden.  Rod always had a strict rule that Emu was never seen inanimate  to maintain the illusion that he was ‘alive’.

Toby left the room with the suitcase and emerged several minutes later with a very lively Emu on his arm. Even without Rod, he seemed as real as anyone in the room.  Our eyes met.  Mine, at least were a bit teary.    We gazed at each other.  One battered bird who’d seen better days to Emu.  If I expected gratitude for bringing him home, I was wrong   Age had not improved his temper. As I went to stroke his head, he bit me.  I went in again, he bit me again.  And then something extraordinary happened.  I attempted to reason with him. I calmly explained that he should be nice to me, as I’d travelled across the world to bring him back to Australia.  Which was ridiculous when you think that I was actually trying to reason with Toby’s arm.  The Australian crew, were doubled up with laughter. Rod’s family smiled knowingly and Emu sat on my head.    We did just about manage a couple of minutes filming and a photo for posterity and then Emu was firmly locked away again.

And so I said goodbye to that icon of my childhood and travelling companion, while managing to nick a bit of raffia as a souvenir and started my long journey home to London.  Cattle class – of course!

It hasn’t been the best of Januarys. I have spent most of this ghastly month working out my tax and then sobbing quietly at the amount I have to pay to her majesty this year (roughly the same amount as the national debt of Italy, if you’re asking and absolutely justified and paid willingly if anyone from HMRC is reading).

When not adding up receipts and pondering whether I am singlehandedly sustaining Amazon, I’ve been freezing. It’s been flipping cold I’m sure you’ll agree and thrift prevents me from popping on the heating of an afternoon. I’ve been going to Bikram Yoga daily, just to get warm. A bit too warm actually if you’ve ever tried it (see earlier post). And so, in another effort to warm up and in a show of solidarity to those who have been far colder than myself, I visited the Scott Exhibition at the National History museum.

I hate the Natural History museum. I find it really boring.  I am not interested in stuffed blue tits (phnar…) or cock robins (phnar phnar). The dinosaurs are quite good, but to reach them you have to suffer at least six large school parties of seven year olds all snuffling, wandering off and being shouted at by harrassed teachers. The Blue Whale is the biggest (in all ways) disappointment. Yes, it’s huge. But it’s not a real blue whale is it? It’s a plastic model. I would be far more impressed if it was a testament to the world’s hardest working taxidermist, who’d happened upon a dead blue whale, had a good deal of time on his hands and a larger than average living room and had set about the blue hued carcass with whatever it is taxidermists use for taxidermy,  for our viewing pleasure.

Dead plants, birds and bees aren’t for me. But I have a strange and long standing interest in polar exploration. Those who know and tolerate me, will find this unlikely. But it’s true. Ever since I read a book about an all female expedition to the North pole, which answered questions like how do you go to the loo in a super cozy onsie when there’s no tree to pop behind and it’s minus 40? I’ve been hooked.

A recent article in the TImes complained that the North and South Poles are now the latest tourist traps and that anyone with access to a helicopter can get there. The South even has a visitors centre, which made me think of elderly ladies selling seal blubber chutney and tea towels decorated with polar bears tearing tourists limb from limb. Yes, apparently if you go now, you’re likely to happen upon explorers attempting to win a place in the Guinness book of records by reaching the north pole on a  Pogo stick or trek to to the South pole, only to find Jordan in a bikini flogging her latest ‘autobiography’ while signing autographs for passing penguins!

But it wasn’t always thus.  In 1912, before helicopters, satellite phones, proper thermals and gps and certainly before Jordan was a glint in the milkman’s eye, Captain Robert Falcon Scott spent two years in frozen antarctica with a team of men researching the geographic make up of the area and preparing to attempt to become the first to conquer the South Pole itself. The whole story of Scott’s Terra Nova expedition (1910 -1913) and its ultimate and tragic failure is told. I’m not going to describe it, go see it. It’s brilliant. Really badly laid out, with too many bits of admittedly very interesting information to read which causes bottle necks in every corner. But it’s worth the hassle. This glimpse into the alien world of those who attempt to conquer even more alien worlds is visceral, fascinating and Herbet Ponting’s footage is some of the best you will ever see. It certainly knocks Attenborough filming polar bears at a zoo – the cheat) into a poor second place.

Apparently its taken 623 words to get to my point – quite good for me don’t you think? And here it is – actually there’s several. For I learnt a few things at the exhibition and here they are:

Firstly, unless you really do have a helicopter, proper thermals and a satellite phone, you probably shouldn’t go to the South Pole. You might die. (Scott’s last diary entries read in an audio exhibit by an actor descirbing their last days alive are among the most regret filled,   moving words I have ever heard).

Secondly, Photos of Captain Oates, show that, as well as being a hero (he’s the one who said ‘Im just going outside, I may be sometime’ to attempt to save the others from death by starvation) he was absolutely as fit as you like…. and I defininitely would have. And I don’t care if that’s wrong – he was quite possibly the perfect man…. dreamy to look at and selfless to boot.

Thirdly, and for me, perhaps the most important…. I learnt that Pemmican is not a flapjack. I have wondered for years what Pemmican was.  I knew, from reading Swallows and Amazons (one of my all time top ten novels – forget it’s for children – read it) that Pemmican is a type of food. In S and A, John, Roger, Susan and Titty (yes I know) go on a sailing expedition during a summer holiday to hunt pirates and conquer the lake district. They want to take Pemmican but can’t find any, which disappoints them and me, the reader as Arthur Ransom never explains what Pemmican actually is. Since reading this book, I have always assumed that it’s probably a type of delicious calorific oat based snack, rolled in golden syrup, almost certainly containing delicious raisins.

How wrong can one salivating woman be? Fourteen Kilos of Pemmican was taken on the Terra Nova expedition to fuel the explorers as they trekked to the Pole. And what fuel it is. Large bars of pure fat..YUCK! mixed with powdered, and unnamed, meat. DOUBLE YUCK. Why couldn’t they take Kendal Mint Cake like normal hardcore and terribly brave explorers? Yes, at the Scott expedition, my Pemmican fantasies were shattered in an instant. No wonder it isn’t widely available at Morrisons.

However, Pemmican could be about to make a comeback. There’s a website dedicated to it www.pemmican.com. Check it out. It also has a wikipedia page. And it wasn’t Pemmican’s fault that Scott et al didn’t survive their trip. Bad weather meant that they couldn;t get to the place where the Pemmican had been placed to fuel their journey home. And if Pemmican is about to make a comeback. Surely it’s natural place on the food chain would be as the basis for the latest faddy diet…?  Yes high fat and protein content and no carbs. Surely The Pemmican diet is the bastard son of Atkins and Dukan. I can see it now….. Jennifer Anniston maintaining her figure by Pemmican alone. Vanessa Feltz slims down to a size 8 on the ‘celebrity Pemmican diet’. I’ve even come up with a slogan…”Perfect Pecs with Pemmican” or How about “Power off the pounds with Pemmican” – It’s a winner surely?

It’s only a matter of time people! x

I haven’t blogged for a while as I have been busy getting in the way while a team of professionals create two list shows to clog up the airways over New Year for the delight of probably tens of viewers.

The following blog is dedicated to Chris, Verity, Helen, Liam, Lynn, Rich, Sita, Kathy, Pinky Beaumont, Emma, Rooney, Bukola, Marianne, Val, Stuart, Louis and Dan….

Yes, I always know its Christmas when I see nativity scenes of Mary begatting
the christ child and we bring forth the Christmas ‘miracles’ of the Channel Five list shows…….. This year, I was put in charge of not one, but two offerings. TV’s Fifty Greatest Magic Tricks and my own baby – The Most Shocking Celebrity Moments (of 2011). As ever, birthing these has been a labour of love, requiring gas and air and oft’ an epidural…. And so, as the placenta has been fried up, and I await offerings of Gold… frankinsence… even a bit of Myrrh wouldn’t go amiss, I thought I’d share the final week of the journey from conception to transmission….. A week in which a Panto Dame questioned my sexuality, I gave Discgraced sports chatterers Andy Gray and Richard Keys the red card (again) and I mislaid an infamous footballer for a heartstopping half hour.

Picture the scene. It’s monday 5th December, the start of the final week of the edit…In Soho, four edits beaver away cutting packages of great beauty and joy for the two shows and I am in a basement studio in County hall (not as glamourous as it sounds), interviewing celebrities in a last minute panicky kind of a way in order to make the shows more fun, glossy and revealing… kinda!

‘Twas a surreal sort of a day, it started with Christopher Biggins asking if I was a lesbian! I”m not, by the way, as I went on to prove when I told Jimmy Osmond I loved him and failed to become aroused when lunchtime brought the arresting sight of Jenny Bond in her underwear, as she manfully changed from her sparkly on camera dress (thanks Jenny) into outdoor clothes to go for lunch with her daugher. Then a master interview for Magic and a quick pre interview chat with the brilliant Penn and Teller, and yes – magic fans – Teller speaks in real life. They were fabulous on camera thanks to Rich – and I, having got in the way, not for the first time, then high tailed it back to the edit to view, criticise and send packages for both shows to the Channel for more viewing and more critiscising…… I then jump into an edit – more cos I want to than because I’m needed, to refine a few tricky shocking moments packages and to cut the opening tease, always the hardest bit of the show…… and as I grapple with the many twists and turns of Charlie Sheen’s meltdown – I wonder whether the runners could lay their hands on a bottle of tiger blood to ease the pain.

Fortunately TV’s Fifty Greatest Magic tricks, under the caring ministrations of the quite magical Helen, Liam and Rich, is nearly done….. So I am able to bury my head into the famous and infamous of most shocking celebrities……

Tuesday brought the realisation, however, that we had forgotten to write an opening tease and start and end of parts for Magic – so I tend to these and throw them out to yet another edit – I think by this point we have six and then write the same for Shock…. You know the kind of thing… Coming up… more spurious slander on a celebrity slag who’s no better than she ought to be…repeat over a whopping ten parts!

Wednesday…..9pm…. the packages are all cut and we’re onto our rewrites and changes and it’s finally time to start the onerous task of the Shock Stitch or if you prefer…the bit where we decide the running order and one edit takes on the enormous job of putting the whole show together – complete with number graphics, opening titles, start and end of parts etc….. But before this – I must decide a running order…

Contrary to popular belief, this isn’t decided by the viewers, or a panel of the great and good. You do not win the number one spot in a raffle or by sending me bribes (although celebs take note, that would work next year) – no, the running order decision took place in the wee small hours of thursday morning – when Lynn, Sita, several bottles of red and I wrote the names of all our celebrity shockers on fifty post it notes and the names of the celebs who’d talked about them underneath and commandered a large table to divide these into parts…. It’s a horrific task and it has rules – no sports stories in the same parts, no split ups or music or telly stories together etc….. and try and minimise contributors in the same parts – this isn’t as easy as it sounds when Kerry Katona, popular fruitcake and our biggest booking has made it into almost half the packages. The bloody thing was ripped apart and reordered more times than Lindsay Lohan has made court appearances until Lynn came up with the brilliant idea that every time we moved a package we had to drink. By 3am there was a running order, we couldn’t walk and I had told the girls that I loved them (more than once).

And so dawned Friday – the final day … and legal notes, including the surprise news that Magic was actually starting pre watershed at 8pm rather than the usual 9pm and therefore we had magical cigarette consumption, decapitation, regurgiation and rodent mangling (yes watch to find out what that was all about) all before the kids went to bed…. So we panicked, at least one person shouted (no prizes for guessing) and reordered that stitch, while muttering under our breaths – absolutely noone would be stupid enough to chop their own heads off while watching this show…probably.

In the meantime, Shock encountered its own legal problem – The package about how Gray and Keys made offensive sexist remarks off camera that were mysteriously published on you tube had to go…. for reasons I shan’t bore you with. And so, as darkness fell – Edit producer Chris manfully cut an extra package about Fatima Whitbread getting a cockroach stuck up her nose… cerebral no… funny very!

And so we stitched and got the show down to the appropriate time…. then realised that we had forgotten the Wayne Rooney package and inserted it – having to then lose two more minutes…..

And now it’s all over – the edit hours added up lasted longer than Kim Kardashian’s marriage – but like every proud mama – our babies have come really good – I defy you not to roar at the Bez and Julia Robert package , or guffaw at Nancy Dell’ollio. Feast your eyes on the amazing Dynamo and the evergreen Paul Daniels -with the ever greener Debbie Mcgee

Most shocking celebs will be gracing your screens 9pm 30th Dec and TV’s Greatest Magic Tricks on 31st at 8pm both on Five they are then repeated on the 1st and 2nd Jan respectively…. So on behalf of Team Five Archive – we wish you happy tv viewing and a Happy New year!

I’ve just seen My Week with Marilyn. Go see it – a beautiful film that made me cry at the end – because 6 years after this beautiful vulnerable, woman made The Prince and the Showgirl, she was dead… at 36… through an overdose of barbiturates.

Its made me think about the real Marilyn Monroe. A woman who was passed between foster homes from the age of eleven, after her mother was sectioned. A woman who lived terrified that she would turn out like her mother and a woman who meant so much to so many fans, yet so much more to the hangers on who would do anything to keep her on set, on time (ish) and alive to make them as much money, if not more, than she was making herself. !

I always loved her for the tragic elements of her life, but it’s only recently that I’ve truly recognised her on screen talent. Loved Gentlemen prefer blondes… and some like it hot… but I always thought Marilyn was an amateur – Jane Russell in Gemtlemen was amazing – but Marilyn … well Marilyn was just Marilyn and after her untimely death, the whole world has queued up to tell us what a great actress she was. But I never saw it. Until now.

You can’t judge Marilyn by todays standards. She wasn’t a classical actress. She played the sex goddess throughout her movie career. And although she took acting terribly seriously, always striving to be better, learning the god awful ‘method’, we always saw her as a sex goddess, the eye candy through various films, playing ‘Marilyn’ to the bitter end.

But when you look at her films, you can’t take your eyes off her.. She is beyond everything that actresses try to be. She is the very embodiment of a ‘movie star’ – she’s not Angelina acting her heart out while men look at her body going – ‘I want her’ and women look at her body going ‘I want to be her’ She just is Marilyn, beautiful, perfect, engaged and engaging – it doesn’t matter if she’s acting – she fills the screen – in a way that none of todays actresses ever can.

There is nothing so palpably female as Marilyn and nothing so sad as a woman,at 36 dying from an overdose of barbiturates. She was beautiful, but life wasn’t.
She loved those who loved her too much back Joe De maggio left a red rose at her mausoleum every week until his death

And she loved those, who didn’t love her – ringing and ringing Jack and Bobby Kennedy on the night she died.

I have always loved MM – and I adored Michelle Williams in the film

Marilyn Monroe: The most perfect woman who ever walked the earth – I, a very imperfect woman, who has loved you since I was 16 and am now considerably older than you were when you died, salute you. x