Diary

Inside Diary

Matthew Norman's Diary: Voice of liberty silenced by courts... and The Sun

Monday, 19 July 2010

And so it ended, Jon Gaunt's career as SunTalk's Voice of Free Speech, not with a bang or even a whimper, but with deafening dead air. One minute there he was, Gaunty, up at the Court of Appeal, challenging Ofcom's censure over his depiction of a councillor as a "Nazi" on the most convincing human rights grounds. The next, the case duly lost, News International marginally refined its plan to launch a digital station with Gaunty at the helm, into closing SunTalk at once and dropping the digital idea.

Diary: Sheriff Matthew lives on

Friday, 16 July 2010

We had it on rather good authority that Matthew MacFadyen was miffed to find his role in Ridley Scott's Robin Hood was minimal

Diary: Novel approach to fashion

Thursday, 15 July 2010

Rappers who act, actors who paint, writers who design fashion lines: here at the Diary, we always appreciate a renaissance man.

Diary: Say hello to my little ad

Wednesday, 14 July 2010

You can tell that the new commercial for Australia's Vittoria coffee is tasteful, because it's in black and white, like La Dolce Vita. And it has a soundtrack by Nick Drake. And Al Pacino is in it.

Diary: Dizzee with delight

Tuesday, 13 July 2010

Party of the year, we're assured, was the Serpentine Gallery's summer bash last week – to which Diary duly dispatched a reporter, hoping to garner some celebrity wisdom for your reading pleasure.

Diary: George gathering dust

Friday, 9 July 2010

Even committed political agitators need a hobby. In a blog for the Daily Record, George Galloway reveals he's working on – what else? – a musical about Dusty Springfield.

Diary: Parsons' purple patch

Thursday, 8 July 2010

You needn't be a veteran Prince-watcher to presume that a man who briefly changed his name to a symbol might be given to grand pronouncements.

Diary: Joly poor show, Batman

Wednesday, 7 July 2010

If you can't win an Oscar then gracing the cover of your school's magazine is surely the next best thing.

Diary: Goalless Rooney dropped

Tuesday, 6 July 2010

England's World Cup exit is having a convulsive effect on the publishing trade. Remember Wayne Rooney's staggering £5m deal with HarperCollins in 2006, to produce five volumes of autobiography over the course of his career (His agent said it would be "like the Star Wars series")? One of the tomes was to be a diary of the lads' glorious 2010 campaign in South Africa. Only now that the shirty Number 10 is sunbathing in Barbados without a single goal to his name, the book has been quietly shelved. It's unfortunate: an insider's account of the dysfunctional England camp would doubtless make compelling reading, which is why Fabio Capello has already been offered £1m for his side of the story – and nobly declined, preferring his FA salary. It's also, we must assume, the reason another HarperCollins title, Why England Lose, is climbing the charts, and was just named The Bookseller magazine's book of the week. Meanwhile, Totally Frank, the memoir of Rooney's fellow mis-firer Frank Lampard, has been appearing on booksellers' websites under the title "Totally Rank". A mistake, apparently.

Diary: Triesman should start the payback with a joke

Monday, 5 July 2010

What a delight, as always, to begin with a world exclusive. On Friday, Lord Triesman will break his silence about the Mail on Sunday sting that ended his chairmanship of the FA.

Diary: Long dark M Night of the soul

Friday, 2 July 2010

M Night Shyamalan must have thought he'd endured the worst reviews of his career for his 2006 movie, Lady in the Water ("This cloying piece of claptrap sets a high-water mark for pomposity, condescension, false profundity and true turgidity" – Wall Street Journal).

Diary: Twilight to the rescue

Thursday, 1 July 2010

Twilight hype update: following news that Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart, are among the most powerful celebrities in the world (according to Forbes magazine, at least) and that Twilight: Eclipse is the biggest US cinema opening in history, screening yesterday on 4,416 screens across the States, we were also delighted to receive an email advertising some unofficial, Twilight-related merchandise to add to the keyring, the lipstick, the duvet cover, and the special edition DVD.

Diary: Restoring Paloma's faith

Wednesday, 30 June 2010

An honourable Glastonbury mention must go to singer, actor and consummate clothes-horse Paloma Faith, 24, who spent much of the final day of the festival standing outside the press tent in a gold lam� arrangement topped by preposterous green headgear and a parasol.

Diary: Harvey hit by the acting bug

Tuesday, 29 June 2010

This column began with high hopes of sustaining a series of stories on rappers-turned-actors.

Diary: Another artistic appendage

Friday, 25 June 2010

Does the world need another Vincent Gallo, actor-slash-musician-slash-performance-artist?

Diary: How to keep your iPad clean

Thursday, 24 June 2010

The release of the new iPhone today sees Steve Jobs once again hailed as a demigod by the technorati, but the Apple CEO and registered US Democrat can hardly have expected he'd also become a darling of the Christian right.

Diary: Far-flung Young has his say

Wednesday, 23 June 2010

Diary would like to add to the saturation media coverage of father-of-four Toby Young and his mission to establish a "free school" in Acton, west London. It will teach Latin, apparently.

Diary: Getting the bird

Tuesday, 22 June 2010

Furtive smut fans will shed a discreet tear over news that the Erotic Print Society, publisher of the Erotic Review, has closed down. The Review was a media success story of the early Noughties under editor Rowan Pelling.

Matthew Norman's Diary: Rooting for you, Gaunty

Monday, 21 June 2010

Keep that yellow ribbon round the old oak tree, at least for a few more days until we learn whether the High Court will spring my old friend Jon Gaunt from captivity at the hands of the PC brigade. His challenge to Ofcom's censure of his wontedly restrained description of a councillor as a "Nazi", downgraded swiftly to "health Nazi", for defending a ban on smokers fostering children, will be decided this week.

Diary: Oh Lord, Webber junior

Friday, 18 June 2010

There was J S Bach the Elder and his nephew, the Younger. There was Johann Strauss 1 and the more talented II. Now a new Lloyd Webber is abroad.

Diary: Football's future not so orange

Thursday, 17 June 2010

Nobody comes off too well from the tale of Robbie Earle's ticket allocation. At the last World Cup in Germany, Bavaria beer (the company responsible for this week's "ambush marketing" stunt) tried a similar trick, giving out free, Bavaria-branded orange lederhosen to fans.