Danger, baddie, magic…

Don’t care about Harry Potter. Don’t care about the children who love him. Don’t care about the middle-aged weirdos who read the books on the Tube. (Some muggles are too dumb for shame, even.) Don’t care about J.K. Rowling, although I will ask this about her: why does she always look so miserable? If you were worth £600 million would you look so miserable? Maybe she just pretends to look miserable, so we don’t feel more envious than we already are. Perhaps once she closes her front door behind her she dances down the hall exclaiming, ‘I’m so rich it’s unbelievable; I’m so rich it’s unbelievable’, before snacking on ground-diamond toasties and bathing in champagne.

Good luck to her and all that, but I just don’t get it. I half-read the first Potter book with my son but he got bored the moment Harry landed at Hogwarts on the grounds that: ‘if it’s magic and anything can happen, it doesn’t really count.’ I know what he means. I so know what he means. Magic is cheating. Magic is boring. Magic can even be Paul Daniels. On the other hand, I guess, what do we know? We’re not worth £600 million, don’t skip down the hall and don’t bathe in champagne, except on Tuesdays, and I’m quite strict about that.

So, anyway, this is what? The film-makers insist it’s the fifth film, and not the 678th, as I’d suspected. I even said, ‘Come on, it’s the 678th, who are you trying to kid?’, but they wouldn’t be having it. It’s two and a half hours long and, boy, you are so going to know it unless you: 1) are mad for this kind of thing; 2) have some previous understanding of what the hell is going on and 3) aren’t the sort of person who asks yourself questions like: what’s the point of being the foremost boy wizard if you can’t at least magic yourself 20–20 vision? Come on.