Prince Harry

"D'you mean to tell me that that geezer of a bloke is third in line to the throne?"
"I do."
"But he's just a jerk, a bit of a fool, a nerd with no more sense than a worm."
"Wrong. He's well educated...."
"Eton I suppose."
"Yes. Then Cambridge or Oxford, one of the two."
"S'pose they gave him easy passes."
"II don't think so. He's quite intelligent, I'm told."
"Intelligent? Getting hisself photographed naked with his balls in his hand? I call that stupidity myself."
"The lad was just having a bit of fun, that's all."
"All very well I dare say 'cept that all the rest of us have got our heads down trying to make ends meet."
 "Sowing wild oats while he's still young."
"Young! He ain't young. He's twenty eight. That's old. Old enough to know better anyway. I wonder what the army thinks of him."
"Well, the upper reaches of the army, I'm told, haven't taken too kindly to his behaviour."
"I'm not surprised, him being a hofficer and all. Fine thing for a hofficer with ordinary blokes under him to be cavortisising with a group of unclad young tarts - setting a good example, eh?"
"He'll grow out if this like Prince Hal."
"Who he?"
"Shakespeare's Prince Hal in Henry the Fifth: fun loving, womanising, jesting and joking when he was young then, when he became King, he dropped all his friends like Sir John Falstaff and became a man, taking on the French at Agincourt and licking them."
"How old was this Prince Hal before he changed?"
"O quite young, early twenties I'd say."
"Not twenty eight."
"No."
"So he wasn't still cavortisising at twenty eight."
"No."
"I think most people, 'specially those who work hard for the general good of this country, would tell him it's time he grew up. Don't you think so?"
"I suppose so."

Clooney

George Clooney is superb in his film "The Descendants". But he's always pretty good. He usually plays the part of an upper middle-class guy whose life seems satisfactory yet there's something going on in his head that makes him doubt it. He can do comedy but of a sort that is sophisticated; a bit like Cary Grant - though he's not as funny as Grant at his looniest. David Thomson compares him to the early William Holding but I can't see that: he's gentler than Holding; Holding could play dirty, a cynic whereas Clooney can only play clean, open-minded, charming. He tends to play men with a problem to cope with in their lives; not a physical problem like a mountain to climb but a moral one. He's on the left in real life but not so much a socialist, I think, as a liberal; he cares about how people are governed, how they are treated by big organisations, how they are manipulated. This feeling of good will he takes on in the characters he plays so that when they are themselves a trifle ruthless as in "Up In The Air" he gradually becomes conscious of this and, while he doesn't do anything drastic to change things, he does feel deeply about it so that you think "yes, he might try to change things for the better".
His character in "The Descendants" has many traits: he doesn't know how to handle his teenage children because he has never learned to - his wife has managed that; he can't face up his wife's infidelity but he struggles to find some aspect of it he can cling to - he doesn't seek revenge on his wife's lover but, rather, wants to make the man go to the hospital where she lies in a deep and deadly coma, something he feels he owes her.
The film is enjoyable on many levels but not least for the performances it produces. Not just Clooney, though he is in every scene and dominates most without being dominant, but his two daughters and other members of his large family, mostly cousins, are played to perfection. And there is a young man in it who, whenever he's on the screen, induces chuckles - he is simply a lug with a coarse sense of humour and a tactlessness that makes Groucho Marx appear saintly.
There's a scene between the lad and Clooney that is simply superb. Clooney cannot stand the boy but, one night when he can't sleep, he accidentally wakes the lad and they chat, and gradually you see that the boy is actually a human being and that Clooney begins to like him. It's a masterclass in acting from both but the boy's job is easy while Clooney uses all his technique and charm to show the gradual change in his character. It's beautiful to behold.

Woody Allen

In a new documentary film about Woody Allen, someone says (may have been him) that he achieved everything he wanted to in his life: he wanted to write gags for comics, he became a successful stand-up comedian, he acted in films, usually his own, he became a famous film director/scriptwriter, he married late successfully (not so successfully sometimes) and has two wonderful kids. The one thing that eluded him was a box-office success, he said. No sooner had he said it than he achieved that too with "Midnight in Paris" which brought in millions of dollars.
The main obsession he has, it seems, is with death. He said something like he didn't fear it but didn't want to be there when it happened. He was always a good joker about serious things. Maybe that was his way of facing up to them. He has a lot to say about God, especially about his non-existance. But even that he makes jokes about.
I think he's one of those people who was brought up in a rigorous religious way so that his Jewish-ness and its effect on him is always there, as it were peeping around a corner at him even when he's engaged in dismissing it and God with it. I have known Catholics who say they were lapsed Catholics, yet when it came to the crunch, taking communion, going to funerals etc they can't seem to shake off the influence of the church. I don't think Woody has completely shaken off his Jewish religiousness: it's always there watching him as he goes about the business of denouncing it.
Some of his films are just good stories with jokes: they aren't about serious topics or issues or have moral themes. But some deal with the one serious topic that concerns him: death and earthly justice. In both "Crimes and Misdemeanours" and "Match Point" a man, the main character, kills someone or gets someone to kill someone and gets away with it. Not just gets away with it but lives "the good life" afterwards. Indeed, lives a better life afterwards. I don't know if this is telling us something important but it does tell us that Woody Allen is a pessimist and an atheist. But a peculiar form of atheist: one that has no moral values.
So, is he saying that you cannot have moral values if you are an atheist; moral values only come from religious values - which he doesn't have? A peculiar form of existentialism, maybe.
I think he's a great film maker because he is a cinema stylist. He's up there with Ozu I believe.

Jack Matthews

I'm told Jack Matthews invented the crash tackle. Certainly, he used it a lot in his games for Cardiff and Wales when he played at centre with Bleddwyn Williams. One game I recall: Cardiff were playing Coventry, at that time a quality team, not so now I believe. Soon after the start Jack found himself on the ground with the Coventry forwards, possibly revenging themselves for tacjkles in previous games, putting their boots into the small of his back. He got up, probably had a word with his scrum half telling him to let the Coventry backs have the ball, and, when his opposite number received the ball, he received the canon ball that was Jack Matthews with it. The poor bloke was knocked clean out; he lay there on the ground like a dead man. Revenge was, no doubt, sweet.
I did hear once or twice that Jack had once killed an opponent in a tackle. While of course it was possible I don't think it happened; it was one of these tales that went around which told the listener how powerful his tackles were.
I know that he once did his best to save a player's life. Someone who had played with Jack Matthews in the forces told me that in a certain game, something happened and a player lay there on the ground with blood pumping out of his neck. Jack went straight to him and, being a doctor, knowing what to do, put pressure on the man's neck where it was needed and kept the pressure there until an ambulance arrived.
He was not considered as great a player as Bleddwyn Williams but they complemented each other in the way that Jack could penetrate the opposition with his hard and fast runs while Bleddwyn could penetrate with his side-step. They were in the fifties a lethal combination in the Cardiff side and in the Wales team.
Now Jack Matthews is dead but he will be remembered by people of my age and admired for his skill and of course for his tackles. I wouldn't have liked to have been a centre playing against him.
O yes, I almost forgot: When he was a young man in the forces he met, in a boxing ring, Rocky Marciano who was then in the American army. They went three rounds and the match was drawn. Was Rocky over-rated or Jack under-rated I wonder.