Piddly Witterings

Legendary James Bond actor and cantankerous old giffer Sean Connery this week apparently “blasted” the BBC for their lack of coverage of the Edinburgh International Film Festival. I love it when journalists say that somebody “blasted” somebody else. It makes it sound like there was a gargantuan conflict in outer space between The Legions Of Connery and the Benevolent Broadcasters of Compassion, and when the BBC willfully and callously ignored Dark Lord Connery’s demands to cover the EIFF he set his ultimate weapon of devastation to maximum killingness and BLASTED the beeb into tiny, impartial, London-centric crumbs.

The main reason Connery upped his cantankerosity was because, he claimed, there were 300 technicians covering the Glastonbury Festival and none at Edinburgh to record his rare appearance outside his tax haven, oops, I mean, idyllic home in the Bahamas.

Now don’t get me wrong, I do kind of love Sean Connery, not least for being the joint-second best James Bond ever, but also because he’s such a curmudgeonly goat these days. The only times he pops up any more is to moan about something, which of course is his right as he’s 78 years old and if you’re not moaning when you’re 78 then you’ve lost your marbles and think you’re a bus conductor on the Isle of Sheppey.

But Sean also winds me up because he seems utterly dismissive of the role of Bond that made him a legend, but hasn’t proved himself to be any better than that since Goldfinger in 1964. The closest he’s come since then was as Indiana Jones’ Dad, and that was 20 years ago. What’s more, the sheer arrogance of playing Greeks, Irishmen, Spaniards and Russians, all with the same Scottish accent, is almost up there with Bono’s self-belief that he can save a doomed Spider-Man musical with his magic golden Bono-dust.

So, sorry Sean, I know you’re hacked off because you think the world hates Scotland, but you know what? While 300 BBC employees were getting sorted for Es and whizz on the Glasto gravy train, none of them – NONE OF THEM – covered the launch of the most beautiful movie blog in the room, The Incredible Suit. What’s worse is that I know a few people who work at the BBC and at least one of them could easily have pointed the viewers of their daily TV politics show or the listeners of their Five Live radio show towards the centre of the blogosphere, but no. I remain scorned by a corporation more interested in a massively popular, hugely successful, genre-crossing music festival than a collection of piddly witterings. At least I’m not bleating about it in some kind of public forum. Er…

So viewers, keep your eyes peeled for tomorrow’s headlines: “The Incredible Suit yesterday METAPHORICALLY BLASTED Sean Connery for being a whiny old codger, then FIGURATIVELY BLEW THE BBC TO SMITHEREENS for not even noticing it existed. Then it had a nice cup of tea to calm down.”