Media Monkey: Aidan Turner, Benedict Cumberbatch and Newsnight
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Version 0 of 1. • Aidan Turner, star of Being Human, The Hobbit and now Poldark, was mobbed at a BFI screening of the BBC’s reworking of the 70s drama set in the 18th century, after which much of the Q&A was devoted to a nude swimming scene already talked of as the Irish star’s “Colin Firth moment”. Mystery, however, surrounds the origins of the splendid full-body tan this scene shows off, which suits the drama’s Cornish setting. Asked to name her favourite scene, his co-star Eleanor Tomlinson, who plays Demelza, couldn’t come up with one but instead mentioned that “watching Aidan get spray-tanned” was interesting. “That didn’t happen! She’s lying, that did not happen!” Turner insisted, failing to dispel the impression as he continued that he was protesting too much. • The screwball inter-star dialogue continued at the press conference when it emerged that four babies were used to play Poldark’s child but, according to Tomlinson, “one got fired”. “It wasn’t with the union”, a po-faced Turner explained. • They might have gone for Eddie Redmayne as cover star of the magazine’s pre-Oscars issue - he was after all odds-on favourite to win best actor. Or they might have gone for a risk-minimising cover bringing together all the British acting nominees, which would also have had the advantage of featuring three women. But instead - as if bound by a contractual obligation to feature one of Steven Moffat’s male leads every few weeks - they bizarrely went for long-shot Benedict Cumberbatch alone, thereby predictably adding him to the long list of victims of the Radio Times Curse. • Hacks at the London Evening Standard tidied their desks and were on their best behaviour last week for what the paper called the “historic” visit of Prince Charles, accompanied by newly clean-shaven proprietor Evgeny Lebedev. But as sycophantic Standard execs accompanied the prince on his walkabout, they were galled to see him dart away to chat to a journalist on the Independent (which shares the same office as well as owner): veteran travel journalist Simon Calder, a ubiquitous presence on TV and radio when travel issues come up but hardly an obvious royal buddy. Why he was singled out remains unclear, but hopefully Charles wanted to mock Calder’s pompous self-billing (a much-resented implicit put-down to rival, freebie-accepting travel journos) as “The Man Who Pays His Way”. • Things have been tough at Newsnight, with star signing Laura Kuenssberg on extended leave until this week and Paxo stand-in Evan Davis hit by Jon Snow’s Bette Davis-like zinger calling him “very good on the radio”. But at least the demoralised bedtime programme is showing signs of buoyant creativity in devising nugs (plugs posing as news). Monkey is unaware, for instance, of anyone previously pulling off two plugs in a single “news” item, like last Tuesday’s Kirsty Wark interview publicising both Wednesday’s Wolf Hall finale and her own offering Wolf Hall: The Inside Story which followed it on BBC4. Beat that, Today programme! |