Pick of the week’s Gossip

One of Michael Jackson’s unfulfilled ambitions was to play James Bond, according to the memoir of Hollywood agent Michael Ovitz. At the height of his fame, Jackson – buoyed up by his success as the Scarecrow in the film The Wiz – invited Ovitz and Ron Meyer, his business partner, to his house to tell them that he wanted to star in an action movie, and would be the perfect replacement for Roger Moore in the 007 franchise. As Ovitz and Meyer struggled to keep straight faces, Jackson’s signature black hat fell into a bowl of guacamole; they finally exploded into laughter when he put it back on his head and a blob of green goo slid slowly down the brim. Jackson walked out, but was pacified when Ovitz told him: “You’re too thinly built [to be Bond], you’re too sensitive. You wouldn’t be credible as a brutal block of stone.” John Lennon was not, it seems, generous with his praise. According to Paul Mccartney, in all the years they collaborated musically, Lennon only once paid him a compliment. The moment came in 1966, when they were working on Revolver, and Mccartney played his song Here, There and Everywhere. “John says as it finishes: ‘That’s a really good song, lad, I love that.’ And I was like: ‘Yes! He likes it!’ I’ve remembered it to this day. Pathetic, really.” He says he did praise Lennon, but admits the two were competitive – which spurred on their creativity. “He’d write Strawberry Fields, I would write Penny Lane. He’s remembering his old area in Liverpool, so I would remember mine.”