‘I got these teeth from David Bowie’ Ricky Gervais

‘Pull my hair,’ says Ricky Gervais, leaning towards me, face down, shouting. ‘Pull it!’ He wants me to grab a handful and give it a yank, to prove there’s no wig, but I don’t know if he’s joking or angry. ‘You win one award, you’ve got the room. You win two awards, it’s “Yeah, good luck to them.” You win 25 awards and everyone in that room hates you,’ said Ricky Gervais, who has multiple awards. ‘Do you want to check I haven’t got lifts in my shoes?’

Gervais has gone manic, grinning wolfishly with a fire in his eyes as if he’s about to bite my throat. His dark hair seems real enough close up, but all I asked – and all I really want to know – is if he wears a corset. ‘A what? Why?’

A corset. You know, to keep it all nicely in place around the stomach region. He is a star, after all. The romantic lead in his own film, The Invention Of Lying, which comes out on DVD tomorrow and sets him alongside Jennifer Garner. As a Hollywood leading man… ‘Definitely a bit of sarcasm there,’ he says quickly. ‘And your left eyebrow went up. A hint of sarcasm. Or incredulity.’ I know what “leading man” means here. Not Brad Pitt and George Clooney. It means Woody Allen and Stan Laurel.’ Read the rest here

 

Peter Mandelson loses his temper

He’s very cool, Lord Mandelson of Hartlepool and Foy. In the sense of never getting over-heated. Except this time. ‘You may think it’s funny and cheap to make snidey remarks about how I could afford to live where I do. If my mother had not got Alzheimer’s and hadn’t died, I wouldn’t be able to live there. And I’d prefer my mother still to be alive.’
Tell me, what do you make of him?

‘Hugely readable and thought-provoking’

“He dazzles,” says Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in The Independent. “You stay with Moreton because you can’t bear to jump off.”

“This exuberant and assured book posits the central dilemmas of our times.”

There are warm words too in The Observer, The Independent on Sunday and The Tablet. The Bookseller previews the book with those by Peter Hitchens and Desmond Tutu and calls it “hugely readable and thought-provoking.” You can read all the reviews here.

'He dazzles' says Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

“How to describe this eccentric, mistifying and gripping book?” asks Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in The Independent, before going on to give the book a wonderful review. You can read the article in full here but in the meantime, a few choice lines:

“A sprite takes you by the hand and leads you through the streets (and roads and lanes) of England, shows you things, tells you things, some unsettling, many astonishing and a number plain shocking. Only Moreton is no sprite. He is an amiable Englishman, warm like the beer they say such men like to drink, yet also sharp, intelligent, observant, sensitive and what we now call emotionally literate.”

“You stay with Moreton because you can’t bear to jump off. He dazzles, has verve, holds your eye; this charismatic, hypnotic celebrant.’

“This exuberant and assured book posits the central dilemmas of our times.”

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