A great actor, certainly, Sir Ben is also well-known for his eccentricity.

It is one of those urban myths that he always insists on being addressed as Sir Ben, ever since he was knighted in 2001. The rumours began when he appeared in 2006 film Lucky Number Slevin, the promotional material for which referred to him with his title. The rumours are unlikely to abate after the director of The Wackness, Jonathan Levine, in which Sir Ben plays a pot-smoking professor, was quoted as saying he called him Sir Ben constantly on set."I was told that's how to address him and never even once tried a simple Ben, just in case it angered him and he walked off my movie or something."



Thomas Turgoose, the Grimsby teenager plucked from obscurity to star in Shane Meadows' This is England, continues to have problems getting into events because of his age. It started when This is England was given a 15 certificate, meaning that Thommo, as his friends call him, couldn't get into screenings of the film because he was still 14.

Now 16, he can at least see the new Meadows film he stars in, Somers Town, but he still can't get into the parties celebrating it.

Seen outside an after-party for a movie premiere and asked if he would be going in, the straight talking teen said: "Not likely. I tried getting in there after the Baftas and they wouldn't let me in 'cos I'm too young and I'm not going through that embarrassment again."

Even worse, he suffered the same indignity of not being allowed to see the next film he's in, Eden Lake, a horror with an 18 certificate.



The stinging barbs of the critic's pen clearly do take a long time
to heal. Earlier this year – before the so-called summer, in fact – Maureen Lipman joined a brilliant cast in The Cherry Orchard.

Lining up on the footlights with the Hull-born actress were Dame Diana Rigg and William Gaunt, but it seems that a brilliant cast is no guarantee of glowing reviews.

Writing in a magazine this week – almost three months after the show finished – Lipman says: "I have had the most wonderful time playing Charlotta the governess in Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard in Chichester. The production was generally derided by the critics, but we just got on with being in the best play ever written."

You can almost hear Lipman's clipped tones adding "so there" at the end of the sentence.



Opera, what's that? Apparently, this is the sort of response from people when faced with questions about Tosca, La Bohème, The Marriage of Figaro and La Traviata.

A new survey has revealed that many Yorkshire folk have never heard or seen opera before and, astonishingly, some respondents don't even know what opera is.

To help these people out, Yorkshire Bank has teamed up with Opera North to produce www.operamadesimple.com – an easy to understand guide for the opera newcomer. The bank has stopped just short of calling it an idiot's guide. This has been brought about by a survey which questioned more than 1,700 Yorkshire adults and discovered that 37 per cent of people are reluctant to go to the opera as they don't know what to expect. Respondents admit that they would like to attend an opera but just don't know enough about it.

The guide is launched this week in time for the start of Opera North's autumn season.