Even Saddam star mauls show

FOYLE’S War creator Anthony Horowitz hit the headlines last week when he declared he’d have to write his second play under a pseudonym because his first, Dinner With Saddam, was so unfairly savaged by critics.

Now, however, one of the stars of the show, Zed Josef, has said blame lies with the playwright, not the critics.

‘ It really wasn’t any good, Mr Horowitz,’ Josef says, accusing him of ‘profound failures of judgment’ over the play, which tried to find comedy amid the horrors of Iraq.

The play was guilty of ‘ racial insensitivity’, he claims. ‘The source material fostered an atmosphere in which Arab mores were not the environment of the comedy, but the butt of it. . . Mr Horowitz, in this instance, your work simply didn’t deserve the praise.’ Ouch!