To say the least, the cast is star-studded and varies from the sublime (Cate Blanchett reprises her role as Galadriel) to the ridiculous (Barry Humphries??) and introduces some new blood to the Tolkein scene – Martin Freeman is cast as Bilbo – surely with a face which was created just for that role. We can no doubt expect great things from him, as everything he touches has turned to media gold lately.

Was ever a man more suited to the role of Bilbo?

 In a conversation which began completely unconnected to Tolkein a friend of mine recently commented that women fit into two categories – those who like Legolas and those who like Aragorn. I couldn’t help thinking that the third category ie those who don’t have the faintest idea who either of those is, would probably be the largest group. Anyway disappointment for the Aragorn lovers as he has no role in the Hobbit. The delightful Orlando Bloom will be coyly swishing his blond wig as Legolas, however so at least one group will be content.

Perhaps best of all the inimitable Ian McKellen again plays Gandalf (who else could, now?).

Anachronistic but effective. Maybe best to lose them for the final cut.

Truly amazing scenery, a host of tip top actors, dwarves with bows and arrows and Martin Freeman with hairy feet. What more could you ask for?

The premise of the film is that the world is occupied by entirely truthful individuals and when the protagonist comes up with the idea of a lie, he becomes rich beyond his wildest dreams as a result. You can imagine – casinos, banks etc, but the funniest and cleverest thing about it was the very accurate portrayal of how advertising would work in a world of truth – eg the Pepsi ad on a bus which declares “Pepsi – for when they don’t have Coke”

Who says honesty is the best policy?

Not sure this will take off as an alternative to "coke is it" or "coke adds life" but it does at least speak the truth....

Coca cola doesn’t escape either, with a hilarious version of a truthful coke ad, explaining  that coke really does nothing  for you but contains huge amounts of sugar, and that the purpose of the ad is to “ask you to not stop buying coke” followed by the slogan “Coke – it’s very famous”.

I see from online surfing that the US is way ahead of us in this, since in 2004 the Federal Trade Commission released the result of a 2.5 year, 12 person study which concluded that “40% of adverts for weight loss products make at least one false claim” – well, duh!!  And as for the figure of 40%?!

"Get Slim Slippers" are reduced to $29.99 for a limited time from Getslimslippers.com, everyone! I wonder if they can cure stupidity?

29 year old Joshua Nelson's mum was sure she replaced the toilet roll only this morning....

Yes indeed, Joshua Nelson robbed the store with toilet paper round his head and made his getaway leaving a trail of toilet tissue which police followed, happily ending in his arrest. Still at large, however, is this equally creative criminal genius:

This mystery man got away with $50 of ciggies having disguised himself with a Budweiser box over his head

Clearly concerned that all his cunning efforts to disguise his head would be wasted if his hand was recognised, he put a towel over it and demanded cigarettes from the amazed store clerk. Oddly enough this also happened in Lincoln, Nebraska. Something in the water maybe? Or could it be that emboldened by the beer box incident, the dreaded thief returned, draped in toilet paper, but like Napoleon he met his Waterloo (no pun intended) on this occasion.

However my internet research reveals that in the “worst ever idea for a disguise” stakes, these guys win – they were arrested in Carroll, Iowa shortly after passers by alerted police to a break-in:

Permanent marker really is just that...

Well what these ingenious criminals lack in cunning they certainly make up for in stupidity. There really is one born every minute.

Having had quite enough of this election stuff I searched the papers for more interesting stories and I see that according to the Telegraph “Beautiful women can be bad for your health” and the Independent shouting “£1500 fine for screw in burger” both of which intrigued me more than the details of David Cameron’s election day breakfast or the red shoes worn by Sarah Brown.

The big news of the election campaign was undoubtedly Mrs Brown's snazzy wedges

The Telegraph article gave the startling news  that a psychology experiment carried out by  the University of Valencia showed that in the company of an attractive woman, men tend to become a bit stressy and awkward. Hold the front page. Now it becomes clear why the Spanish economy is on the verge of collapse – they have spent all their Euros on pointless research to tell us something we have known for many years……

Apparently men frequently feel shy and awkward with a woman around them

Step away from the Tofu burger – a company from Devon has been fined £1500 because a punter discovered a large screw inside one. Aside from the thought that a tofu burger sounds like the most revolting of things anyway, my first reaction was to think that at least that one would have some nutritional value. Far from being fined, I think the company, amusingly named “Naturemade” has hit on a great idea to encourage veggie types to up their iron levels.

Finally, and this I think wins my award for “best attempt to dig oneself out of a hole” is the tale of Dr George Rekers, American Baptist Pastor and extremely harsh and outspoken critic of gays, who accidentally ended up on Rentboy.com and hired himself a rather beautiful blond Puerto Rican rent boy named Lucien to accompany him on his holiday recently. In case you are thinking that Dr Rekers is a revolting old hypocrite, he needed Lucien only to help carry his luggage – doctor’s orders apparently.

See how Dr Rekers was struggling with the luggage - luckily, strapping 20-year old rent boy Lucien was on hand

“Like Jesus Christ,” he told a reporter, he liked to spend time “with sinners with the loving goal to try to help them”.  Especially if they are perfectly proportioned, blond and barely old enough to be out without their mother.

Traffic. Yes, in fact it is a fave topic here (news headlines only yesterday announced that London has had 370,00 separate roadworks this year) but apparently also in the USA where Tom Vanderbilt has managed to get a book published on the subject, entitled “Traffic – why we drive the way we do”.

Whilst not rushing to order a copy, I did feel vaguely curious as to why this would be in any way interesting to the average Joe, so I looked at some excerpts online and I now know for instance that “Men honk more than women, and they are more likely to honk at women than at men” and “drivers of convertibles with the top down are less likely to honk than those with the top up”

Less likely to honk at you....

Filing these in my brain under “stating the bleedin’ obvious” I moved on and caught site of a traffic headline which alluded to a “strange naked taxi guy” and I read to my great amusement that in Hefei, China, a small crowd had witnessed this:

A man ran into traffic, starkers, and proceeded to try and lift a taxi, much to the puzzlement of the driver, shown. When police approached him to ask him to desist both from lifting taxis and being naked, he ran away and hid under their van, refusing to come out. Now that would be something more interesting than the weather to talk about, would it not?

Designed perhaps to appeal to most men who can’t bear him and would love to cover him in cake, or more likely to most women who would relish the idea of Hugh Grant and cake in close proximity, the dull story which followed was merely to say that he’d argued with someone at a celebrity bash and got chocolate cake on the front of his shirt such that he “later changed into a clean one”. Hold the front page. 

Hugh Grant got quickly on the phone to his dry cleaners after the chocolate cake incident

Northern Ireland may not be the hub of all world news but surely they can come up with something better than that?!

Also deserving of this award is the ground breaking news from the Daily Telegraph-  ”Harry Potter invisibility cloak prototype created by scientists” – how exciting, one might think – the applications will be endless! Read on and you will find out that a team of German and English scientists managed to render “almost invisible” a “gold bump that measured 0.00004 inches high by 0.00005 inches across”. Let’s just get this straight – these guys managed to make something which is already invisible, “almost invisible”. Wowsers, as Inspector Gadget would say.

Lastly, on msn I spotted the intriguing news “Death of Wizards greatly exaggerated” – but on clicking I found that far from being the tale of  a police shoot-out at the HQ of a weird sect of conjurors, it was a baseball report about the defeat of the team of that name. Yawn. More of these awards when ridiculous headlines arise but feel free to nominate any in the meantime….

Coo - the Little Mermaid is real after all....

So to use the word hoax to describe the stunt by a Georgian TV channel who took it upon themselves to broadcast a fake news report stating that the much-feared Russians had once again invaded the country and the president had been murdered, seems to me to be the understatement of the century.

A representative of the now less than popular TV channel was interviewed on radio 4 today and said something to the effect that no harm had been intended or in fact caused by the broadcast so what is all the fuss about? Seems rather like letting a toddler play in the lion enclosure – if they don’t get killed then no harm done, eh?

Who knows – strikes me that it could have been a deadly Russian conspiracy to cause a “boy who cried wolf” situation prior to a real invasion – but way more likely it was just down to programme planning by total nincompoops.

Imedi TV's 001 is now as popular as a turd in a punchbowl

The reason for my sudden interest is that I spent the weekend with my partner in Barcelona, where he ran the marathon in 4 hours 56 minutes, not exactly an Olympic time but when you consider that he hasn’t been out running for about 2 months and has spent the last fortnight stuffing his face with fried food and desserts, it was quite an achivement.

He should probably have done more training but my other half did finish the race.....

I was bursting with pride when he came hurtling (that’s probably too fast a word but hey) past the finish line, but sadly, despite practice runs filming Spiderman and other noteworthy finishers, I managed not to capture the great moment.

11,000 runners in the marathon but not a glimpse of Barcelona's most famous resident

Oh well. Barcelona is a truly wonderful place and there could be worse ways to spend a Sunday morning than watching hundreds of athletic Spaniards running past…..

A completely new take on Lewis Carroll’s story, it features a stellar cast portraying Wonderland later in Alice’s life (she is 19) when things have taken a turn for the worse.

Kind of a shame to take someone like Johnny and dress him up as the Mad Hatter but Tim Burton knows what he is doing....

With Tim Burton in charge it’s highly unlikely to be less than spectacular, and his affectionate partnership with Johnny Depp (anyone see Friday night with Jonathan Ross this evening?) seems set to continue to produce weird and wonderful epics in the vein of “Edward Scissorhands” which shot Depp to fame in 1990.

Tim Burton went beyond weird in Edward Scissorhands

When asked, tongue in cheek, about the possibility of doing a romantic comedy, Depp was both amused and horrified at the suggestion, saying mildly that it’s “not his thing”.  Amongst many other things, it’s  that resistance of the temptation to be one of the Matthew McConaugheys of the world, cashing in purely on near perfect looks, that makes him such a phenomenon.

I couldn't find any pictures of a woman biting a bus driver so I thought a carrot would suffice.

On the subject of biting I read today of another crazy, who on a Pakistani “Talent” show was shown biting the head off a live snake, then proceeding to skin and eat it, leaving only the bones. The episode was mistakenly aired on British telly, sparking a flurry of complaints from animal lovers and outraged parents whose children had no doubt been simultaneously terrified and delighted by the act.

My main complaint about this would have to be that these shows get air time – but if they must, surely there should be some means of filtering out the snake-head-biting losers desperate for their fifteen minutes of fame.

Fangs for the memory....(sorry just couldn't help myself)