Taking care of Toby
Sir: Kirsten Dunst never insisted that I ban Toby Young (Status anxiety, 6 September) from the set of How To Lose Friends & Alienate People. Toby’s piece stemmed from a recent article of mine in Empire magazine. In his opening paragraph, he says he learned from it that ‘the reason I was banned from the set of the film is because Kirsten Dunst insisted on it’. But Toby didn’t read my article before he wrote his.
For the record, Kirsten told me on set that Toby had given her a performance note. (Toby says she overheard him give a note about her performance to a third party. The difference is negligible and entirely unacceptable behaviour either way.) Kirsten, a true professional, whose performance was never anything other than spot-on, was understandably bugged, but not nearly as much as I was. When she politely asked if it was necessary that Toby continue to visit the set, I replied, ‘Consider it taken care of.’ My plan was to explain set protocol to Toby, and suggest that if he couldn’t refrain from expressing himself about how anyone was doing their job, it was best that he not show up. My plan was for a reprimand, not a ban.
That night, I got a lengthy email from Toby critiquing one take of a scene I had shown him as a courtesy. Based on that 30-second take, he wrote up a detailed analysis as to why he felt ‘the scene didn’t work’. Toby’s note broke the camel’s back. But he gave me a great ‘out’ by saying ‘every time I visit the set, I’m filled with anxiety’. I simply copied and pasted this phrase into a reply, and followed it up with, ‘Very easy solution to this.’ That was the full content of my letter. Toby was never banned from the set, but his future visits were strictly monitored.
Toby has written a number of pieces about this production, and I often read about a fictional character — the director of the film — who happens to share my name. Toby is usually good about running these things past me, and I’ve told him that I understand that his job is to ‘print the legend’ for comic effect. But after reading unwarranted internet criticism of Ms Dunst for having Toby ‘banned’, I thought someone needed to print the truth.
Robert Weide
Studio City, California
Many a diamond jubilee
Sir: Robert Hardman believes that ‘Up to now, only one monarch in history has celebrated a diamond jubilee’ (‘Never mind the Olympics — get set for the Jubilee’, 6 September). What tosh. To take the most obvious example, Emperor Francis-Joseph of Austria reigned from 1848 to 1916, which is 68 years. There are many other examples.
Roger Broad
London W2
One-sided history
Sir: M.A. de A Brandao is right (Letters, 6 September) to draw attention to the brutality of the Germans and Japanese in the second world war, and he is probably right to assert the comparatively honourable conduct of British troops in Greece in 1945. However, his thinking demonstrates a one-sidedness that is all too common in Britain today. We may have been fighting the evils of fascism, but this did not stop us from committing evils ourselves. Take for example the failure of the British government to release readily available food stocks to alleviate the Bengal famine in which between a million and two million people died. Also, being on the right side in 1939-45 should not make us blind towards the many examples of brutality, racism and greed that characterised much of Britain’s imperial policy (Delhi in 1857, Kitchener’s internment camps in South Africa, and Amritsar in 1919 to name but a few). It is right that our schools educate children about the honourable role Britain played in defeating Hitler, but it is wrong that more problematic episodes in our history are virtually neglected in school syllabuses. We can only truly honour our heroes if we acknowledge our villains as well.
Leo Quirk
Via email
Lidl luxuries
Sir: Judi Bevan is mistaken (‘Nice pork, pity about the pizza’, 6 September) in thinking the middle class don’t shop at Lidl; I modelled green corduroys in the first Boden catalogue and now do all my shopping at Lidl.
The real savings are to be made on all that Continental stuff that we have been hoodwinked by the big supermarkets into believing are luxury goods. Salamis, prosciutto and parmesan cheese are all available at a spectacular discount. One shouldn’t overlook the drink either — premium German lagers at prices to suit the heaviest binge-drinker and own-label cognac at under a tenner.
But in addition to its astonishing value, we enjoy the shop for its freedom from retail-guru nonsense. Vorvarts Lidl!
Jonathan Burge
Ipswich, Suffolk
Alpine monsters
Sir: According to Taki (High life, 6 September), quoting the Victorian secretary of the Alpine Club, ‘goblins and devils’ had long vanished from the Swiss Alps by the middle of the 1850s. Yet when Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins crossed the Alps in 1853, they were still astonished at the appearance of some of the locals. ‘The beautiful valleys,’ Collins reported later, ‘are nests of pestilence and the people who inhabit them are hideous with disease and deformity. Many of the people are born idiots as certainty, if they are born in the valleys.’ The first of these creatures he saw was about the height of a child, ‘had the face of a monkey and could utter no articulate sound’. This was, no doubt, the result of in-breeding in small communities.
William Clarke
London SE10
Lines of duty
Sir: Peter Cooch (Letters, 6 September) is correct: the line ‘What we need at this stage of the war is a futile gesture’ first appeared in Beyond the Fringe, not Blackadder. But he is wrong that the sketch ends with the commanding officer’s ‘God, I wish I was going with you, Perkins.’ It actually ends with the exchange, ‘Goodbye, sir; or is it — au revoir?’ (pause), ‘No, Perkins.’
Professor Gareth Williams
Pontypridd, Wales
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