Salut!

Elton John, Boy George, gnomes and broccoli

When Sir Elton John reached the row behind mine as he walked down an aisle at the Leicester Square Odeon, he stopped to plant a huge kiss on the head of the seated Boy George.

What was I doing at the London premiere of Gnomeo and Juliet, the garden furniture version of Shakespeare's tragedy? What were any of us doing?

Can Spirit of Britain give a fillip to Calais?

There'll be plenty to say about Malaysia - excellent trip, miss the place already - and to catch up on other things (Darlington, Reeth and so on), but the launch of the new P&O superferry, Spirit of Britain, pulls rank ....

I don't make a habit of doing my weekly shop in Calais.

But two days after arriving home from Penang and Kuala Lumpur, I discovered that the reason my Blackberry had stopped working in Malaysia was that the six-year-old sim card had finally died. They do, apparently, and since the phone is a French one, it was to France I had to go to replace the card.

Gone fishing again

ChR!s H@rR!0t

Salut! will be unusually quiet until later in the month. I am off on holiday - to Malaysia - and have left nothing timed to appear in my absence.

This creates a wonderful opportunity for the cretinous international spamming community, led in most recent attacks on Salut! sites by the energetic but hard-of-thinking folk at Coachbags MVP* - feel free to send them sharp little emails at this address - to post some more of drivel masquerading as "comments".

It is a pain having to clear it out, but I would rather accept that irritating inconvenience than close the site to genuine readers who really wish to post relevant thoughts.

* in a typical recent attempt, in fact one of a series of attempts, to leave gibberish disguised as comments, Coachbags MVP wanted to dump this sparkling prose in response to a piece at Salut! Live about the BBC folk music awards:

LJ, I didn't discount anything. I already said upthread that the Puritans and the Quakers didn't celebrate Christmas, and that the Presbyterians didn't either for awhile. I said nothing about their size or influence. I stand by my statement. Dr. Sci can speak for herself, but she approvingly cited a teacher who told her that "American colonists didn't celebrate the holiday." That's a broad blanket statement. And a false one. Factually so. And that's the problem with broad blanket statements, no? I really think your criticisms are misguided and misplaced.

Brassed Off: film classic or blasted tosh?

Originally posted Oct 14 2008, republished in honour of Peter Postlethwaite, who has died aged 64. See short tribute by clicking here

We could argue about this all day. Since it has cropped up again here, let's at least give it a few minutes more.

Was Brassed Off a funny, moving, politically and socially decent study of a pit closure, enlivened by impassioned music and the even more impassioned polemic of Peter Postlethwaite's Albert Hall speech.

Or was it "a manipulative, sentimental piece of dreck" for which Postlethwaite "should have been arrested for disservice to the film industry"?

It is all too easy to say that while the former view is taken by anyone capable of being impressed by a film that finds a clever and appealing way of addressing the casual destruction of a mining community, the latter is the mucky preserve of self-inflated Islington and Californian critics, and right-of-Genghis Khan brutes everywhere.

In fact, my regard for the film, despite the sentimental blemishes, triumphs over a lifelong refusal to romanticise the working class (got beaten up along the Black Path a little too often for that). And my friend and regular contributor Bill Taylor, whose scathing words I quote, does not quite fit the opposing stereotype.

Peter Postlethwaite RIP

Stop press: looking back at a past article from Salut!, the quality and range of views expressed in the comments field made it an easy decision to give it another airing ... click here

Salut! is sad to note the death, at just 64, of Peter Postlethwaite, a first-class actor whose many admirers included Steven Spielberg.