I’m having to acknowledge and fight a growing obsession with how ‘big’ films manage to get itself reported as news and thus gain free advertising. Bond films are the obvious example “they’ve announced the title”, “they’ve started shooting”, “they’ve chosen the musician to record the theme song”, “it’s the premiere” all news: apparently.

Things dipped to such a spectacular new low today that Today on BBC Radio 4 momentarily appeared to have recruited Alan Partridge. The latest film to get itself onto the news is about the hunt for Osma Bin Landen. They’d fallen for this marketing trick and lined up an interview with the man who plays Bin Laden in the film, they ask him about how he approached the role, he speaks earnestly about that for a bit before it turns out his only appearance in the film is as a corpse in a body bag and STILL that doesn’t deter the interviewer who continues to ask about his method allowing the actor to fulfil his contractual obligation to the film’s producers by waxing lyrical about how great the film is and how amazingly good the editing is not least for cutting his entire contribution beyond the body bag moment. FOR HEAVENS SAKE!

Honestly it’s worth listening to (about 2hrs 20min into Tuesday’s programme). Don’t bother going to see the film come and see The Cardinals instead. For about 30 seconds Graeme pretends to be dead (no body bag) if that’s the kind if thing that draws you in.