Why we women think Benedict’s a sex god
By Jan Moir Even the ‘Cumberbitches’ admit he looks like an otter. So here, for the benefit of baffled men, JAN MOIR reveals ...
Remember, remember the fifth of November. For that was the day benedict Cumberbatch broke a million hearts by declaring himself engaged to be married to his girlfriend, Sophie Hunter.
The 38-year-old actor’s crisp announcement came in the Forthcoming marriages section of the Times newspaper, one line of nuptial intent that sent fans into meltdown.
First, the ultimate bachelor George Clooney gets married — and now Sherlock in wedlock shock? Well, I am afraid so, ladies. The bad news just keeps on coming.
In the streets and in the houses, and all across the wastes of cyberspace on both sides of the Atlantic, there was a great wailing and gnashing of teeth. benedict has found true love after a whirlwind romance? Please, please, say it’s not so!
‘I feel like crying,’ tweeted one fan. ‘How could he?’ said another.
Yet, from the sidelines, millions more looked on in bemusement, wondering what on earth all the fuss was about.
For even though Cumberbatch was dubbed one of britain’s most eligible bachelors by Tatler magazine in 2012 and regularly appears on Sexiest man Alive lists, not everyone is bowled over by his odd, vulpine features and singular charm.
Indeed, many men grumpily wonder exactly what it is about this lanky toff with the gingery tinge that inspires such breathless devotion among his loyal fan base.
even by Cumberbatch’s own admission he looks like an otter — or a ‘muppet otter’, as some of his more delirious fans insist.
Those who don’t feel the Cumber-love believe he might actually be an alien who lives in an underwater cave. And that he is cold- hearted and sinister, with tiny hal ibut eyes and a freckled, cadaverous mien.
Closer examination would quite possibly reveal webbing between the Cumber-toes and a secret, collapsible shark fin on his Cumberspine — an aquatic aide that is unfurled only when he goes Cumber-swimming.
Then there are others, like me, who totally understand his appeal.
benedict — as I like to call him — may not be classically handsome, but handsome he undoubtedly is.
That high, broad forehead; those kindly eyes; the strange lips that look as if they were painted by Picasso and would leave a diamondshaped imprint on your neck, a brand of love that gently burned into your skin like a . . . where was I?
Oh, yes. So these are the traits that women respond to, that have made the former public schoolboy an international heartthrob.
more than this, there is also something unquenchably noble about Cumberbatch, an inbuilt sense of grace and the strong suspicion that whatever the right thing is to do, he would selflessly do it in a heartbeat. Nick Clegg he is not.
Intelligent and self- deprecating, the Cumber- ben- person is a trumpet among today’s celebrity tin whistles, a he-giant in a world of lost boys with gelled hair and silly shoes.
A proper grown-up, he even flew to edinburgh to visit his girlfriend’s mother, especially to ask for a parental blessing and permission to marry his Sophie. So darling!
He is the kind of man who would swirl his burberry mackintosh over a puddle so that a lady — any lady — did not get her feet wet. No wonder his devotees are so upset.
When the news broke, thousands of them got together on social media to agree that their lives were ruined, shattered, not worth living any more, basically over, kaput, kill me now, it is the end of days.
The actor’s devoted fangirls, the hardcore obsessives who call them-
Men wonder why this lanky toff inspires lust
selves the Cumberbitches, plunged through the five stages of grief in various public forums.
I must say, it was quite entertaining. There was denial (‘Nooo!’), anger (‘I hate him now’), bargaining (‘Does he secretly still love me?’), depression (‘I have no tears left to shed’) and a kind of acceptance (‘Let us now grief-eat in an orderly fashion’). They were mourning a man whom they had never met but with whom they had somehow convinced themselves they had a shot. Then he went and got engaged to someone who wasn’t them, just like that snake George Clooney did.
Within the boundaries of the fragile, fairytale relationship that exists between star and fan, it almost makes it worse that both these hugely eligible stars chose ordinary women — or, at least, women who were not red carpetready Hollywood actresses — to share their lives with.
It feeds the Cinderella myth and adds fuel to the notion, however fanciful, that it could have been a Cumberbitch up there with benedict’s ring on her finger. except it wasn’t. Not that there is anything ordinary about human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, with her gazelle legs and international rescue mission to save the elgin marbles. by marrying Clooney, she’s already got her hands on a fabulous old artefact. Isn’t is just plain greedy to want another one?
And beautiful bluestocking Sophie is very far from ordinary, too. A former actress who first met Cumberbatch on the set of the 2009 film burlesque Fairytales, she is better known as an award-winning opera and theatre director who writes plays in her spare time. Gah!
If anything, the 36- year- old Oxford graduate is even posher than he is, which is, as bananarama once pointed out, really saying something.
How romantic that both of them had been in long-term relationships before, had known each other
Noble, intelligent, an old-fashioned
matinee idol
through work for five years but only started dating earlier this year and quickly realised they were in love. my dear Watson, when you know, you just know . . .
The fans, who have been avidly following Cumberbatch since his 2010 breakthrough in the bbC series Sherlock, will just have to get used to the new status quo and accept that the guillotine of reality has sliced down on their Cinderella daydreams. As far as bC is concerned, the glass slipper has been smashed for ever.
However, there are consolations. benedict Cumberbatch may be off the market, but he will be in the spotlight more and more. He is incredibly talented, so much so that I am hoping he is going to be the next James bond.
Why not? He is the quintessential quirky brit, someone who can project the necessary nerves of steel, courage of a lion and chip of ice lodged in his dark, english heart.
Who else would you want to be snuggled up to in a foxhole under fire from the enemy? Cumberbatch is his own man, he goes his own way. Uniquely, he is a very old- fashioned sort of matinee idol; a man who knows how to wear a tuxedo and to shoot his cuffs.
And perhaps the most curious thing about him is that despite his other- worldly appearance, he always looks just right in any time zone, from futuristic sci-fi films to playing a World War I officer in War Horse.
So what next for the Cumberbitches? They will recover. They will have to recover.
They can always join the queue at madame Tussauds to pay homage to, and take selfies with, Cumberbatch’s new wax effigy. Unveiled last month and depicting the actor in a pose of typically roguish grandeur, it has already proved hugely popular with those who come only to worship and cry.
but some Cumberbitches can also be selfless.
‘Who wants benedict Cumberbatch to go home to an empty house at night?’ one tweeted through her tears this week.
Who indeed?