Diary – 24 May 2003

Channel 4 outdid itself in ignorance with the dumb, grandiosely titled The 100 Greatest Film Stars of All Time. We tuned in eagerly, expecting to see a cross-section of legendary stars from the 1920s to the present day in fabulous movie clips, and what did we get? Several dozen ‘talking heads’ purporting to be movie ‘experts’, interspersed with extremely truncated footage of some surprising stars, accompanied by scurrilous and unnecessary gossip. Granted, many of the heads did know of what they spoke. Nicholas Hytner and other directors, producers and actors were erudite and interesting, but the editors of magazines such as Jack and Hot Dog, not to mention the assorted ‘stylists’, hairdressers and gossip columnists, were achingly dull, not to mention rude, and included one aptly named columnist called Lycia Naff. One of the lowest points was when one Mark Gernard, whose epithet was ‘critic and broadcaster’, referred to the superb director Roberto Rossellini as a ‘greasy Italian’.