Ed King, spokesman for the BBC, said last night that they just wanted to inject a little more reality into the programme and the moment when leading yokel Twister Turrill announced his desire to shop in a superstore on the edge of the hamlet was ‘something that their viewers would be able to identify with.’

Rumours of the impending superstore has lead the residents of nearby Candleford to form a protest group. At a stormy public meeting held in the Golden Lion Hotel, town postmistress, Miss Dorcas Lane, said ‘We are tired of constantly having to fight the BBC’s demands to modernise our beloved town. It only seems a few months since we fought off their move to open a Lidl on the High Street next to the forge and we still fail see the point of the Halfords Service Centre so close to the diary. They keep saying we have to be dragged screaming into the 21st Century, but it‘s only 1895!’

Mr King dismissed the concerns of the Candleford regulars and listed the benefits that Tesco would bring to the community. ‘It will improve the lives of the folk of Lark Rise beyond all recognition. They would no longer have to grovel in the fields as the Tesco will create new jobs and provide fresh food and produce.’ adding, ‘That is, of course, if the superstore were to be built, which it won’t be. Probably.’

2009 saw the level of randiness in the British male fall sharply, a leading movie historian has revealed. Doctor Stan Thorndyke made the discovery after a careful comparison of British rom-coms produced during the last decade, with British films of previous decades. ‘Comparing the work of Jude Law with, say, Robin Askwith, star of ‘Confessions from a Holiday Camp’, shows that the average male has become steadily less randy since the late 70’s, and the level has reached new lows during the last twelve months.’

Thorndyke suspects the recession to be the main cause, although he also blames the current pressure to be charming and successful in an endearing, Hugh Grant kind of way. ‘The rot starts as early as childhood. Schoolboys are concentrating on league tables and exam results rather than ‘accidentally’ dropping their pencils on the floor during French lessons.’

‘We’re also looking at how the internet is affecting figures,’ he reveals, ‘nowadays young males are spending more and more time online reading about how Simon Pegg has changed from wacky comedian to unlikely romantic lead, rather than getting out there to earn a few extra bob as window cleaners or driving instructors – traditional callings for the average randy British male.’

Also highlighted is the correlation between the fall in randiness and the rise of wrinkly-faced, dirty-laughed men in pork-pie hats and cardigans being placed on the sex-offenders register. ‘Randy old men exclaiming ‘Phwoar!’ were considered folk heroes back in the day, but are now seen as pariahs,’ Thorndyke claims. ‘Britain’s seaside beauty contests, nursing colleges and sixth-form netball courts are all the sadder for their absence.’

Editor of Empire magazine David Maddison is a big fan of the ‘Prestwick treatment’ as it’s now being called saying ‘I applaud this type of guerrilla filming which gives a really nice documentary feel to the whole piece. When I saw the original I thought it was good but I felt like a lone outsider looking in though when you add in the coughs and whispers from the fellow audience members and the shaky camera it makes you feel like you’re sitting right there in the cinema, almost like a film within a film, a fantastic concept. When the guy with the popcorn walked in front of the camera at 1hr24m I craned my neck to try and look around him it was that convincing’

Others who have seen the film have cited the subplot of John trying not to be caught by the staff as a stroke of genius. President of the Academy of Motion pictures Tom Sherak said ‘I’m sure I wasn’t alone in holding my breath as John ducked down in his seat every time an usher walked past, with every shine of a torch beam I was literally gripping the seat in anticipation that any minute he could be frogmarched into the manager’s office. I was particularly keen on his journey to the toilet where the camera is focused on his feet the entire time with the dialogue of the film getting further away until it’s finally replaced by the sound of urination. Of course my favourite part was the omission of the last 15 minutes which leaves the audience hanging indefinitely, no credits just a blank screen and loud rustling noises , very reminiscent of early Lynch I thought’

As John was preparing to be flown out to Los Angeles by the organisers he spoke about his next big project ‘I’m planning to film the whole ceremony on my mobile phone and sell it down the market when I get back’

Dr Miller told a gathering of critics at a preview: ‘I wanted to confound people’s expectations of this Bernstein masterpiece by taking it as far as possible away from its 1950s New York context. And it works! In my earlier productions, I found it easy to give Rigoletto a Mafia-based interpretation or to set The Elixir of Love in America’s diner culture, but I felt I was getting lazy and needed a new challenge.’

Miller explained that in resetting the passion of ‘Romeo and Maria’ in Renaissance Italy, he had found many resonances which brought added frisson to Bernstein’s work. ‘It’s uncanny how well it works in the medieval context, with its setting of squares, high walls and balconies.’

After seeing the preview, Rupert Christiansen writes in today’s Daily Telegraph: ‘Verona at the height of the Renaissance was a vibrant centre of culture and commerce, but the rivalries between noble families and the degree of violence exhibited by the citizens of the city state far surpass the rather tame themes of teenage gang warfare in Bernstein’s original.’

The production features another new departure for Miller, with members of the chorus standing in rows at the back of the stage to avoid detracting from the unfolding story of Romeo and Maria. He explained: ‘You can only do so much with having characters standing around informally, pretending to chat about interesting things, or even dancing for God’s sake, but I wanted to inject a note of realism and have crowds standing around looking bored, like they do in real life.’

Miller said he was particularly pleased with the ending. ‘Instead of just having a street shooting, I’ve given it a really atmospheric setting in a family crypt. There’s this terrific twist where one of them takes a sleeping potion, and then…but I’m not going to spoil it by giving the end away.’

Kermode said it was ‘just terrific’ how in A Single Man, Colin ‘doesn’t do the emoting, the rambling and shambling behaviour that some actors might employ to portray a bereaved man facing the last day of his life’, and asked Colin what his secret was.

Colin said it was his approach to method acting. ‘Some people spend days, weeks even, getting inside a character, getting under his skin, working out how he thinks, what makes him tick. My secret is that I get outside the character. Take my character in A Single Man: it’s the big glasses that draw you in, make George’s anguish believable. Anything else just detracts from the experience.’

Kermode agreed that it was pointless trying to do too much with one of the best and most distinctive voices in film, and asked Colin how he had mastered some of his other roles. ‘Well, for Bridget Jones it was the funny Christmas jumper which really established the character, and then later on the fitted Savile Row suit brought home to you just what an important international lawyer Mark Darcy really was.

‘And in Fever Pitch, a scruffy track suit instantly transformed me into personable English teacher and football fan Paul Ashworth without my having to modulate my charming tones. And then of course there was that wet shirt, which set me on my way.’

Winding up, Kermode gives Colin a hat and a raincoat to wear and asks him to repeat the line, ‘Here’s looking at you, kid’, before saying: ‘Spellbinding Colin. To listeners on the radio that was Colin Firth, but for those of us that could see you in hat and raincoat, that was Rick Blaine in the flesh. Spine tingling.’

According to Connor, who was a buxom 22-year-old barmaid at the time, the incident occurred one night in April 1974, when Detective Inspector Regan and Seargent Carter raided the home of her then boyfriend, Frank Miller. Miller, a small-time crook from the East End of London, was suspected of leading a cigarette-smuggling ring.

‘Naturally I was stark naked,’ said Connor. ‘I woke up, sat bolt upright in bed with my breasts jiggling slightly and asked them what the hell they were doing.’

According to the complaint Regan and Carter then acted in a discriminatory way that caused Connor severe emotional trauma and leaving her too ill to continue dispensing pints of beer and risque banter, to wit:

1) Throwing her top contemptuously in her general direction

2) Inviting her to ’shut it, love’

3) Dragging the still sleeping Miller from his bed and laughing at her attempts to fight them off while still holding a sheet in front of her pubic hair

4) Suggesting that she should get her knickers on and make them a cup of tea

‘This was grotesquely sexist,’ Connor said. ‘As if after all that they would somehow think I’d want to go down and make tea for them? I thought this kind of behaviour went out in, er, the ’80s.’

The Flying Squad itself declined to comment because the case is still in process. However, Regan and Carter told a reporter to shut it, adding that he was a tart, a nonce and a muppet and punched him in the face.

Oxbridge

Scientists at the Kent Institute of Pharmacology admitted that May, 47, had agreed to take part in a trial of an experimental new drug aimed at getting middle-aged men to ‘just grow up’. Unfortunately the drug had the undesired effect of making him grow to five storeys tall, from which height it is believed that May’s instinct ‘to treat everything like a giant train set’ kicked in.

Whitstable was particularly badly hit when rush hour traffic was swept off the road by May’s huge hands so he could force Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond to race each other in two Robin Reliants made of lego. Eyewitness said he later tried to attach an electricity pylon to Clarkson’s car so he could play scaletrix but grew enraged when the wires tangled in his ample fringe, and threw Clarkson over a hill, before running off in the direction of Ashford.

Despite a body count of 3000 and rising, residents of Kent are urged to remain calm, and to talk about cars as much as possible in the hope of creating a familiar and soothing background noise for the confused beast. They are also urged to protect their homes and vehicles by putting up the posters Oz Clarke being airdropped by the RAF across the county.

Richard Hammond strenuously denied that this is yet another zany Top Gear stunt, claiming that ‘a giant James May wandering around causing mayhem really wouldn’t be that entertaining’. Jeremy Clarkson meanwhile hit back at Kent Council’s objection James May destroying the centre of Canterbury and killing thousands; ‘It’s just another example of the health and safety nanny state gone mad!’

Rhysickle

‘It’s a new fresh idea that shows how this fantastic service works beneath its skin, and shows the rivalries and troubles faced by its workers’ said the BBC’s Mark Thomson ‘After all the public are a bit fed-up with shows about hospitals, policemen, soldiers and the like, besides which this show is good value for the licence payer as it’s not quite as expensive to make.’

In episode one, which will be screened at 8pm on Saturday, the service’s Isle of Wight team springs into action to assist with the opening of a second-hand bookshop in Shanklin. ‘It’s drama and action all the way, in fact the only word to describe it is frantic’ says Thomson, ‘As two pensioners tussle for the honour of cutting the ribbon to open the shop which results in a struggle for the scissors and a nasty accident involving a paper cut. Fortunately the volunteers, led by actor Bernard Cribbins, have a folding chair and a small plaster to hand so that bloodshed is avoided.’

Future episodes are expected to focus on other high risk public events including a school fair in Dundee and an under-11 football tournament in Skipton. Rupert Murdoch who controls the News International empire which includes Sky TV was said to be ‘gutted’ at the announcement as he had been thought to be commissioning a similar show for his network. A News International spokesman said that ‘Despite the BBC beating us to this idea, we are determined to uphold our sophisticated broadcasting credentials and go ahead with our new late-night drama series on the Cub Scout movement. After all…’ said Thomson, ‘the public can’t wait to see where Arkela puts his toggle.’