Loading ...
Another gem from the Folkestone Gazette last week (following February’s Day Today-esque “Dolphin bothered by pair of drunks”). Last Thursday we had “The only cliff lift with the Spartacus connection”, a potted history of the Leas Lift, a cable-car-type thingy connecting Folkestone town to the seafront. It was all very mundane until the last sentence, which I’ll reproduce in full:
“And the Spartacus connection? The lift’s biggest moment was a 1991 appearance in “The Darling Buds of May”, starring Catherine Zeta Jones, wife of Michael Douglas, son of Kirk, who played the famous Roman slave”.
Honestly. That’s what it says. So his assertion is that the lift is connected to Spartacus because an actress who’s married to a guy who happens to be the son of an actor who undertook a largely fictional representation of Spartacus once filmed a brief scene there. By the same logic, the Leas Lift might similarly - more closely, even - be “connected” with emeralds (Michael Douglas was searching for one in “Romancing the Stone”), Korean shopkeepers (Michael Douglas menaces one in “Falling Down”) or - well, just about anything in the FREAKING WORLD.
Either I’m missing a fundamental pun (is it maybe because Spartacus “rose up” - like, ermmm, a lift of rebellion against, uuhhh, the cliff-face of Roman oppression?), or the journalist (named Chris Denham, in case you’re googling yourself, you shoddy fecker) has been wagered a sum of money in the pub that he couldn’t get something as tenuous as this past his editor…
This entry was posted on Thursday, July 3rd, 2008 at 7:44 am and is filed under Fatuous comments and ridiculous generalisations, Irritating Things. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
Before you start getting all bigheaded about living near such a hugely famous and romanly influential lift, I’d like to bring you back down to earth with a bump (ha ha) by informing you that there is a bridge on the campus of Sussex University that also has a Spartacus connection.
You see, the bridge once featured in a scene of A Clockwork Orange, which starred Malcolm McDowell, who is the maternal uncle of Alexander Siddig, who played Prince Nasir Al-Subaai in the film Syriana, which was produced by and starred George Clooney, who also starred in Intolerable Cruelty with Catherine Zeta Jones who, you guessed it, is the wife of Michael Douglas, son of Kirk, who played the famous Roman slave. So Folkestone isn’t the only place with a claim to fame, I’m afraid.
fucking hell. now i’ve read that article, that means I’VE got a Spartacus connection too. fuck it - in fact, i pretty much AM Spartacus.
I guess it’s true what they say: everyone’s within six degrees of the Leas Lift…or Romans. Take me for instance, just the other day I was walking around; you know Ro-