19-08-2012

After Andy Murray’s girlfriend Kim Sears decreed that Fifty Shades of Grey isn’t a patch on any of the works of her “all-time favourite author” Jilly Cooper, the queen of the bonkbuster has returned the favour.

“She’s so pretty. I’ll send her a book,” Cooper says. “A compliment like that is just the nicest thing that’s happened to me in years.”

Sears, a 24 year-old English graduate, even said that she would have studied Cooper at university if she had been allowed.

“I would have honestly written my dissertation on her,” she sighs.

Hound picks up the wrong scent

Rufus Hound, the lippy actor, comedian and presenter, has had a lot of work put his way by the BBC over the years, but he seems not to be a fan of Mark Thompson, the corporation’s outgoing director general.

Reacting to the news that the 55-year-old media executive intended to take over as the president and chief executive of the ailing New York Times, Hound said: “I’m sure I’m not the only person saying this, but Mark Thompson has been a ------- disgraceful DG of the BBC. Hope he chokes on Murdoch’s ----.”

As a matter of fact, Hound was the only person speculating about an impending connection between Thompson and an organ belonging to Rupert Murdoch. The newspaper tycoon owns the New York Post, not the New York Times.

A spokesman for Thompson said that Hound “seems a bit confused.”

A running joke

It has been 20 years since the last Carry On film, but Sara Crowe, who grinned and bared the usual saucy double entendres in Carry On Columbus, reckons it is high time that the franchise was renewed.

“The Olympics could be a great springboard for it,” says the Olivier-winning actress, who has just finished a run in the play St John’s Night at the Jermyn Street Theatre in London. “Carry on Running? There, I’ve even come up with the title.”
 

Cooper, by the way, told me earlier this year that she had heard E L James’s Fifty Shades of Grey was “poorly written.”