My enduring love for Ewan McGregor

In the New York Times, the celebrated journalist Maureen Dowd describes Crieff as ‘a sleepy town in Scotland’. Well. There speaks a woman who has never been in the Quaich on a Friday night when the homemade haggis baws with whisky mayo are on special offer and Duncan has come down from Ochtertyre with ‘the fire o’ the deil in ma loins’. A fire, I might add, that no amount of whisky mayo could ever douse. It’s all happening there, Maureen! The Visit Crieff website even promises tourists in the pearl of Perthshire ‘a high chance’ of ‘bumping into a young Obi Wan Kenobi in the high street’. Tiny sigh. The force might be strong, but that’s not really true, is it? Yet the area still fizzes with pride because Star Wars actor Ewan McGregor was born in the town, and his family still live there.

Miss Dowd was writing about McGregor because he is playing the American fashion designer Halston in the eponymous Netflix miniseries. It has had mixed reviews and who knows why, because I could watch Ewan playing Halston forever, or at least until the next resort collection. His big, handsome Crieff head pokes through Halston’s trademark polo necks like a furious tortoise crusted in fake tan; he prowls through the disco sleek of 1970s Manhattan wreathed in cigarette smoke and ego. Halston’s family are not happy with the result, particularly the depiction of the more sensational parts of his story. That is sad, because I like to think the series honours Halston’s art and humanity alongside his compulsions towards sex and drugs and orchids. While his private life might have been seamy at times, Halston’s professional one was dominated by a quest for seamlessness. His spiral-cut dresses rippled down the body like a caress; his original designs now sell for £10,000 on vintage websites.