Scottish Daily Mail

GoldenEye!

IS GLOBES WINNER RICHARD NEW 007?

- From Baz Bamigboye in Los Angeles

OLIVIA Colman shot to serious Oscar contender status after being crowned queen at the Golden Globes for her wacky portrayal of a monarch.

But the British actress hid a secret under her swanky Stella McCartney gown, the Daily Mail can reveal.

As she arrived at a celebrator­y party in Los Angeles on Sunday night, onlookers wondered why her publicist kept squatting down to smooth over the train of the sleek black dress.

It soon emerged that she was wearing a pair of unsightly, yet comfy, Ugg boots – to give her aching feet a rest after being in heels for hours at the ceremony.

The 44-year-old was named best actress in a musical or comedy for her role as Queen Anne in acclaimed film The Favourite on what was a good night for British talent.

Bohemian Rhapsody, the movie about rock band Queen, was best drama film and its star Rami Malek, who played Freddie Mercury, was best actor in a drama. He was congratula­ted by band members Brian May and Roger Taylor.

‘I will keep on enjoying this because it’s amazing’

The hit BBC series Killing Eve was recognised with a best actress in a TV drama award for Sandra Oh, who was congratula­ted on stage by her co-star Jodie Comer and the show’s screenwrit­er, actress Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

Richard Madden, 32, was best actor in a TV drama for his performanc­e in the hugely successful BBC1 thriller Bodyguard, and Christian Bale was best actor in a musical or comedy film for his portrayal of former US vice president Dick Cheney in Vice.

Ben Whishaw was best supporting actor in a limited series or TV movie for his role as Norman Scott in the BBC’s A Very English Scandal, about the Jeremy Thorpe affair.

Whishaw, 38, dedicated his award to Mr Scott, saying that he ‘took on the establishm­ent with a courage and defiance that I find completely inspiring’ and hailing him as ‘a true queer hero and icon’.

In her own acceptance speech, Colman showed her natural aptitude for comedy.

‘Cor blimey, thank you so much,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to cry because my entire table will point and laugh at me as I’ve been crying all evening.’

She had the audience in stitches as she paid tribute to her co-stars, Britain’s Rachel Weisz and American actress Emma Stone, who play rival courtiers in The Favourite, labelling them ‘ma bitches’.

Colman said that every second of working with them ‘was such a joy and I was so sad that it finished’, adding: ‘I would like to tell you how much this film meant to me but I can’t think of it because I’m too excited. I just had a f ****** blast ... I promise I will keep on enjoying this, because it’s amazing.’

Looking into the camera, she held up her Globes statuette and said to her husband Ed Sinclair and their three children back in London: ‘Ed and the kids, look! Yay!’

Glenn Close won the best actress in a film drama category for her role in The Wife, beating Lady Gaga who had been considered the frontrunne­r for A Star Is Born.

It is likely that Colman, Close and Lady Gaga will all receive Oscar nomination­s when they are announced on January 22.

Lady Gaga won best song for Shallow from A Star Is Born, co-written with British producer Mark Ronson.

AS you struggled through the rain to work on a rail replacemen­t bus, the festive break was probably already a rapidly receding memory.

The circular and ever more divisive Brexit debate has reemerged from temporary cold storage to dominate the papers and the airwaves.

But amid the January gloom comes a thin shaft of sunlight: the Scottish parliament is planning a year of ‘celebratio­n’ to mark its 20th anniversar­y.

Exact details are still a closely guarded secret but we know there will be an exhibition, and the parliament will ‘open its doors to the people of Scotland for an afternoon of celebratio­n and commemorat­ion’.

The parliament is also starting a nationwide search for the babies that were born on July 1, 1999, to invite them to take part in an event on June 29.

Perhaps the tag line for this lengthy – perhaps even gruelling – jamboree should be ‘haud me back’ – because this isn’t so much a party as a festival of back-slapping.

Talking of ‘commemorat­ion’, why not cast your minds back to the late 1990s, and some of the grand promises made for devolved politics, including Donald Dewar’s pledge that the parliament would ‘share power with the people’ – and Tony Blair’s vow that the ‘era of big, centralise­d government is over’?

Neither promise has been fulfilled – government has never been more centralise­d, morphing into a nanny state that alternates between tax raids and unenforcea­ble bans.

Nor is there much evidence of public engagement with Holyrood – the turnout for the last two Holyrood elections in 2016 and 2011 was around 56 per cent and 50 per cent respective­ly, compared with 69 per cent and 66 per cent for the last Westminste­r polls, in 2017 and 2015.

Perhaps the half of the electorate who failed to participat­e remembered the earliest days of devolution, which were overshadow­ed by a row over the awarding of commemorat­ive medals to all 129 MSPs.

The medals were designed and produced by the Royal Mint at a cost of more than £7,000.

In some ways, this was tactically astute, because little about the performanc­e of our parliament­arians since has been worthy of any such recognitio­n.

This year, MSPs’ wages rose by 2.3 per cent, taking their basic salaries to £63,579 apiece – although our tribunes don’t have a say on their wages, of course, which are linked to public sector pay.

And yet if you are not lucky enough to be on the payroll of a quango or a government department, and your private sector pay has been frozen this year, you might wonder whether this salary boost is justified.

Wrong

After all, of the legions of MSPs returning to work today after their fortnight off, how many would you be able to identify in a line-up, discountin­g those who have won a higher public profile for all the wrong reasons, such as former SNP minister Mark McDonald?

He was briefly consigned to the basement of the parliament building after allegation­s about lewd text messages.

Apart from the current and former ‘stars’ of the devolved legislatur­e – such as Alex Salmond, now under police investigat­ion over claims of sexual misconduct – the benches are filled with the political equivalent of extras.

It’s a little like the rest of the Oasis line-up – frankly something of a mystery once you ventured beyond the Gallagher brothers. Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard, despite more than a year in post, is unlikely to be troubled by invitation­s to the celebrity jungle, like his predecesso­r Kezia Dugdale, and could safely wander through any amount of heather without having to fear setting it alight.

Patrick Harvie will be all too recognisab­le to most aficionado­s of Scottish politics as the SNP’s great facilitato­r, the man who enables its ‘progressiv­e’ tax hikes.

Yet beyond the heavily subsidised eateries and watering holes of Holyrood, there are many lucky enough not to have heard of Mr Harvie, or his achingly right-on cohorts.

The Scottish parliament building itself opened in 2004, cost more than £400million to construct, leading to a public inquiry, and still requires costly maintenanc­e.

In 2017, the old lighting in the debating chamber was faulty, so parliament chiefs replaced it with 38 elaborate light fittings, each with 129 bulbs, reflecting the number of MSPs.

This cost £1.75million – or £357 a bulb – though Holyrood managers insisted it will save money because the new lights will not need to be replaced every year.

Then there are the ‘thinking pods’ in MSPs’ offices, where they can gaze down on all the taxpayers who fund their expenses – now at a record high of £16.2million.

The public purse bankrolls hundreds of short taxi journeys of less than a mile, which our representa­tives can enjoy while lecturing the rest of us about the need to get out and walk more.

It is this gratuitous selfaggran­dising which undermines those early commitment­s by champions of devolution to an institutio­n that reflected the lives and priorities of those who voted for it (albeit on a turnout of only 60 per cent).

Some believe that the structure itself, and the lacklustre bunch who populate it, may not be the problem – it’s the way in which it has been hijacked by separatist­s.

It was back in 1995 that George – now Lord – Robertson declared that ‘devolution will kill nationalis­m stone dead’, long since exposed as a forlorn hope.

Former Labour minister Brian Wilson wrote at the weekend that the parliament will never achieve its full potential until independen­ce is ruled out.

Nationalis­t MSP James Dornan tweeted back to him an image from the Fawlty Towers episode where Basil warns his staff there are German guests, and the war mustn’t be mentioned: ‘I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it, all right.’

Boycotted

Mr Dornan said that the meme showed ‘Brian Wilson when he’s reminded he’s a Scot’ – with the implicatio­n that no true Scot would question the legitimacy of the parliament.

Mind you, the SNP boycotted the Scottish Constituti­onal Convention, and indeed opposed devolution at the 1997 General Election, so perhaps back then they, too, were self-loathing Scots.

Respect has to be earned, and two decades after its inception the parliament hasn’t done enough to earn the trust either of those who backed it – or of those who were strongly opposed.

The notion of celebratin­g an institutio­n that for many Scots still hasn’t proved its worth is a misjudgmen­t, the latest in a long line of them stretching back to those Royal Mint medals.

It’s time for MSPs to get back to their ‘thinking pods’ – and reflect on why so many of their constituen­ts think the champagne should be kept firmly on ice during the year of self-congratula­tion that lies ahead.

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 ??  ?? Rhapsody: Rami Malek with Queen’s Brian May and Roger Taylor You did it! Sandra Oh, left, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Jodie Comer
Rhapsody: Rami Malek with Queen’s Brian May and Roger Taylor You did it! Sandra Oh, left, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Jodie Comer
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 ??  ?? Queen bee: Olivia Colman
Queen bee: Olivia Colman
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