Dame Judi pledges to carry on
RUMOURS that Dame Judi Dench is having to give up working because of her deteriorating eye condition can be discounted, according to her agent, who says the actress is continuing with film projects despite her gradual loss of vision.
Chatter in showbusiness circles that the 84-year-old star would shortly be announcing her retirement intensified after the British Independent Film Awards, when photographers snapping Dame Judi’s arrival were asked not to use flashes because of the sensitivity of her eyes.
She has spoken candidly about her struggle with failing eyesight which is caused by agerelated macular degeneration and can lead to irreversible blindness. She was first diagnosed with the condition – from which her mother also suffered – six years ago.
“I can’t read at all now,” she said. “Someone has to teach me the script. It makes things very difficult. I don’t keep a diary any more because I can’t see; I can’t do any of that.”
Dame Judi, who won an Oscar in 1999 for
A seasonal tip from
Phillip Schofield:
“If you’ve got a houseful of people (especially if some of them are teenagers) you’re going to have a house full of phones and other gadgets,” says the perky presenter, who will be hosting festivities at home in Oxfordshire with his wife Stephanie and daughters Ruby and Molly.
“One year I seemed to spend half my time being asked the code to connect to our wi-fi. So last Christmas I printed it out on slips of paper, laminated them and gave one to everyone. Definitely worth doing.” Shakespeare In Love, said that the condition had curbed her favourite pastime of going to the cinema.
“If I go to see a film I can’t actually see very much, so a friend has to say ‘He’s kissing her now’ or ‘He’s walking away’. A lot of things I miss, it’s not so much fun.”
The affliction also makes travelling difficult – Dame Judi has said that poor eyesight meant she was unable to go to India on her own to film The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. “I need help when travelling because I need someone to say, ‘Look out, there’s a step here!’ or else I fall all over the place like a mad, drunk lady.”
Happily the actress, whose husband Michael Williams (her co-star in the sitcom A Fine Romance) died of cancer in 2001, can rely on the support of David Mills, a conservationist who lives near her home in Surrey, who has been her companion for the past eight years. As for any impending retirement, her agent Victoria Belfrage says: “Judi has just shot three films this year and is currently working on the film of Cats for Universal, so her condition in no way stops her in her tracks.” Has Christmas left you bored with your partner? Exhausted all topics of conversation together? Those once endearing little habits really annoying you? Then seasoned seductress has the answer.
Spotting an attractive couple at a party where we were both guests, Miss Dell’Olio walked up to the woman and said: “Your man is very handsome, you should share him.”
When asked quite what she meant, the Italian firecracker explained:
“This is my philosophy of relationships. I am drawn to men of passion but even that passion has its limits and can, ’ow you say, wane. So you have to pass ’im on to your friends. Women
’ave a duty to share, to keep our flames burning.”
After that proclamation, she turned to me and fluttered her long eyelashes: “I ’ave a fire that... what eez the word.. always needs stoking. Sensitive men, like you, darling, know this.”
I made my excuses...
Nancy Dell’Olio
Reassuring to know that
has experienced at least one festive disaster.
She tells me: “One Christmas my oven broke and I had to run down the road to my friend’s house – in pyjamas and an old coat – to bung my turkey and everything in her oven.
“I spent the entire morning running back and forth, still not dressed, to baste the turkey and turn over potatoes. And it was pretty embarrassing when I bumped into someone I knew, while in pyjamas, holding a turkey in an oven tray, in the middle of the day.”
Nigella Lawson
Somehow, amid all the Brexit brouhaha which has filled almost every minute of her schedule, the has managed to complete her Christmas shopping.
“There’s no need for a great rush: I’ve done nearly all of it,” Mrs May said as we chatted at a Downing Street reception, adding: “I don’t use Amazon; I think it’s important to support your local high street.”
Any last-minute food requirements will be bought from Waitrose in her Maidenhead constituency.
She and husband Philip will go to the Christmas Day service at St Andrew’s Church, near their home in Sonning. Mrs May, a vicar’s daughter, says of her Christian beliefs: “Faith guides me in everything I do.” Realising that Dominic Cooper is a chap who takes himself rather seriously was enough of a challenge for who decided to prick the Greenwich-born actor’s pomposity when the pair were making the TV series Agent Carter.
Hayley, 36, says of Dominic: “He’s a very suave, good-looking guy but there was a very unflattering picture of him taken on the film set. He saw the picture on my phone and asked me to delete it.
“But on the last day, Dominic walked on set and 150 people were wearing that picture on T-shirts. He was really angry but because he’s like an emotional goldfish – in that he just doesn’t hold on to emotions for more than five seconds – he then said he loved it.”
Now playing an arrogant colonial landowner in the BBC adaptation of Andrea Levy’s novel The Long Song, Miss Atwell has a refreshing sense of humour – perhaps a necessary attribute given that her father Grant, a part-Native American from Missouri, is a shaman who is also known by the name Star Touches Earth. Hayley was brought up by her mother Alison in a London council flat, went to a comprehensive school and was offered a place at Oxford but failed to get her A-levels.
She reflects: “I sabotaged it. I remember when it was clear I wasn’t going to go to university I felt liberated.”
Instead, she promptly landed a TV commercial for Pringles crisps and spent the proceeds on funding her first year at Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
will be trying not to cause any disasters at parties this year. “I had a hideously embarrassing moment at a friend’s New Year’s Eve party,” recalls the breakfast broadcaster. “I was chatting in the kitchen, perched on their radiator, when suddenly it came away from the wall and water started gushing everywhere. I had to call a plumber at 3am and ended up borrowing wellies, desperately trying to mop everything up.”