DEUCE OF AN EVENING

Pleasant crowd of sporty types gathered in the Groucho the other night for some serious old fashioned stiffening on champagne and tequila before putting themselves through the Wimbledon premier – Angus Deayton, Tony Hawks, Aldo Zilli, Chris Evans, Anabelle Croft (as expert witness?) and Penny Smith from GMTV. Are they all tennis fans? Guess so. Rumour has it the movie is a lot more fun than industry gossip would like us to believe, and happily the Americans have been swarming to it in encouraging numbers, putting it in 4th position in the US charts after its first weekend outing in 2034 cinemas across the States.

But then Richard Loncraine, the director, isn’t known for choosing turkeys and deserves a decent blockbuster, if so it proves. Past efforts include The Missionary with Michael Palin, Brimstone & Treacle, Richard III with Ian McKellan, and the excellent pre-Lock-Stock gangster thriller Bellman and True . Also scores of hugely extravagant commercials, but of course we don’t talk about those, do we. He started making films for ‘Tomorrow’s World’. believe it or not.