That John Major is one mighty hunk of man-meat,” said no one but Edwina Currie probably. Watch The Crown this season, though, and you’ll be foaming at the mouth in minutes over Britain’s most boring PM. See, Major – who absolutely, categorically did not advise Prince Charles on whether to force his mother’s abdication in 1991, thank you very much – is played in The Crown by Jonny Lee Miller, an actor so flagrantly good-looking that even dressing him up in geeky spectacles and a floppy grey wig can’t extinguish the heat.
Inappropriate sexiness is The Crown’s métier. Here is a show that thought the perfect person to play famed demonoid Margaret Thatcher was Gillian Anderson, knowledge of whose overt, indubitable sex appeal has been passed down the generations like some kind of erotic folk tale. Prince Charles has been played by both the prolifically allergic-to-clothes Josh O’Connor and, in the new season, Dominic West – think He-Man if he went to Eton. Camilla Parker Bowles, meanwhile, has been embodied by the very beguiling Emerald Fennell and, this season, Olivia Williams – an actor whose beauty is such that Bruce Willis literally convinced himself he wasn’t dead in The Sixth Sense solely to be within reach of her.
