Diary – 16 August 2003

I was sad to hear about the death of Bob Hope, although hitting 100 is a fabulous record – almost like batting 1,000. I worked with Bob several times on his television variety shows and once in a movie, Road to Hong Kong. In the four previous Road films with Bing Crosby, Dorothy Lamour had played the female lead but by Hong Kong she was deemed by the Hollywood hierarchy to be too old, so I was cast to play Bing’s love interest at almost 40 years his junior. Bing was taciturn and grumpy through most of the movie in stark comparison with Bob, who was a bundle of laughs all shooting-day long. Reportedly, one of the last jokes he made, two weeks before he died, was on his birthday. When asked, ‘How does it feel to be 100?’ he quipped, ‘Up until noon I don’t feel a thing, then it’s time for my nap.’ What a trouper – he’ll be missed.

So Blair is pulling a Mugabe and rigging the referendum on the euro. His plans to allow 700,000 non-citizens living in the UK (culled, no doubt, from the NHS bed waiting-list) to vote on whether or not we must have this pesky little currency are cynical to say the least. Since the French adopted the euro, the cost of running my house in the south of France has risen by almost 30 per cent. Indeed, everything has gone up so dramatically that one can only summon a Gallic shrug and mutter, ‘C’est la vie’ as the bill for two cafés au lait at Senequier comes to f10, when it used to be a couple of pounds not long ago. Groceries are much more expensive than in England.