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Thursday 4 December 2008

Diary

Celia Walden negotiates Obamamania and high temperatures

Every six months the tabloid press shakes its pudgy fist in ecstatic indignation over some new film (usually French and about as offensive as a French actress’s unveiled breasts). Last week, it was a British film called Donkey Punch which prompted the ever-raging question ‘Is this the vilest film ever?’ The answer, as with all headlines ending in a question mark, is no, but it is quite possibly the worst. The title, for those of you who missed the disgusted though voluble explanations in the newspapers, is a term used to describe a mythical, sado-masochistic sexual act. The storyline? A group of guileless, cerebrally bankrupt girls from Leeds head to Majorca for a fun weekend — ecstasy, sex with strangers, the usual — when, as usual, the whole thing turns nasty. During the course of the donkey punch, the tarty, expendable blonde (they are a prolific species) dies. Never mind that the acting was as gruesome as the visuals — more troubling was the reaction of the (largely male) spectators. A pack of boys in front of me began to heckle encouragement as the scene unfolded, culminating in whoops of delight as the girl’s corpse lies prone on the bed. To laugh at grotesque films is natural, but this was something else: a chilling disassociation from reality of the kind that seems to be behind the epidemic of stabbings across Britain.

Dinner with the acute Vanity Fair columnist Michael Wolff, who arrives tremulous with excitement. After 56 hours’ worth of interviews with Rupert Murdoch as part of a Random House biography to be published in December, the mogul’s wife, Wendy, had personally organised for Wolff to have an hour-long tête-à-tête with Tony Blair that morning. Colour for the book, I imagine, of the rose-tinted variety. Michael was surprised to find himself impressed by our former PM. ‘He just looked so incredibly handsome,’ he drawled. ‘I couldn’t stop telling him so, then suddenly I realised it sounded like I was hitting on him. Oh and before you ask, of course I asked the question we’re all desperate to know: just where is this great flirtation with News Corps headed? And do you know what?’ Michael clapped his hands with amusement. ‘Blair blushed — the man actually blushed.’

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