Jack Lowden
(Picture: Dave Benett)Scottish actor Jack Lowden complains that people with plummy voices get an easier ride, claiming “accent rules” in the UK.
At the launch of new BBC show The Gold last night, Lowden called accents one of the “great unresolved things” in public life, adding: “We’ve not had too many northern... or Cockney prime ministers”. The programme follows the 1983 Brinks-Mat robbery of gold and diamonds from a warehouse near Heathrow. In it, one thief says people “on the other side of the country do this and get away with it”, hitting out at the class divide.
The world of showbiz has been hit recently by a row about “nepo-babies”, as some have said too many actors have famous parents.
Lowden, who is dating fellow actor Saoirse Ronan, partly grew up in Essex but used an accent coach to master a Cockney brogue.
Lost for words on Love Island
Love Island’s Iain Stirling tells us his favourite bit of the show is seeing beautiful people who have never been rejected getting “mugged off” for the first time. The comic narrator enjoys seeing contestants’ “brains trying to calculate what the hell has just happened”. Stirling’s wife, Laura Whitmore, was replaced as presenter by Maya Jama this year — he says he hopes the show will run as long as I’m a Celebrity, then “duck out”. Do audiences agree?
Truss and Kwarteng start again
Shortest-serving PM Liz Truss and her chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, have set up private companies for life after Downing Street. Truss registered an office this week, while Kwarteng started consulting firm Soracte Ltd last month, reports The Spectator. We notice that while Truss’s office is on Chancery Lane, Kwarteng based his above an accountants in Hove. Someone warn them: don’t take financial advice from the guy upstairs.
Richard E. Grant declines a face-lift
Actor Richard E. Grant has had some odd offers since it was announced he’s hosting next month’s Baftas. Firms have offered a “gentleman’s facial”, which is “a non-invasive skin-tone lifting whatever,” he says. Grant declined, saying: “I don’t imagine there are enough unguents on the planet to turn my crocodile skin handbag of a face into anything more luscious and lifted than it is now”.
The Doctor is in the house
New Doctor WhoNcuti Gatwa posed next to a painting of himself outside the studios. Actors Sheila Atim, Naomi Ackie and Daryl McCormack were at the Savoy for the Bafta Rising Star award, while Charlotte Spencer and Hugh Bonneville went to a screening of The Gold at BFI Southbank. And as publisher Condé Nast said it is leaving its Mayfair Vogue House offices after 65 years, former boss Nicholas Coleridge, pictured outside in 1991 with Princess Diana, said it is like “the ravens leaving the Tower”.
