Disappointing original

Though the documentary film is silent, it gives the impression that Almasy loved killing animals and also that the explorers did not think the locals of any more value than beasts. Kurt Mayer also found letters in the Almasy family castle in Bernstein in Austria that seem to suggest he was a homosexual rather than a heterosexual seducer of women, as depicted in the book and film. The love of Almasy’s life was Hans Entholt, who was killed in the Second World War. The film shows Almasy as extremely tall and thin, far removed from Fiennes’ classic good looks, and rarely without a cigarette. “Ralph Fiennes looks very different from Almasy,” says Mayer.

“And it is very strange how in The English Patient he moves in exactly the same awkward way as Almasy.”

Declining fortunesAnn Iverson, chief executive of the fashion house Laura Ashley, who is responsible for the company’s radical change of image in the last couple of years, is in trouble along with her company.

Laura Ashley, once famous for its floral designs, was forced to shut down two of its Welsh factories recently, with a loss of 190 jobs a fall-out of the steadily declining fortunes of the company. The share prices of the company have plummeted to a quarter of what they were a year ago amid allegations that the campaign to shed the company’s traditional image, initiated by Iverson, has backfired.

Iverson, who was brought in by Laura Ashley’s widower, Sir Bernard Ashley, to turn around the company’s failing fortunes, set about changing the company’s traditional image of winsome chic with a predominance of florals and frills and bringing it in line with the power dressing of the Nineties. The demure, empire-line frocks covered in meadow flowers disappeared off the rails overnight, replaced by “modern classics”.

This commitment to chuck out the chintz was reiterated in an ad campaign which ran in the United States earlier this year “Say it without flowers”.Iverson is coming under increasing pressure to explain her £1 million pay package as the company continues to flounder.

Switching jobsMarcelle D’Argy-Smith, who made the archetypal glossy magazine editor at Cosmopolitan, with declarations like “when in doubt buy shoes”, has taken charge of the more sedate Woman’s Journal. Fifty-year-old Smith left Cosmopolitan in a blaze of publicity after a mutual agreement’ with the managing director of the magazine, Terry Mansfield. Smith had said they had had “wonderful moments and terrible half hours together”.Cosmopolitan and Woman’s Journal are hardly one of a kind, while the former concentrates on sex and relationships, the latter is aimed at what is described as the no-age woman’. In reality this would mean women between 35-55 who have probably sorted out their relationships. The Journal is more interested in clothes that fit the fuller woman, but all that may be about to change. “It’s a magazine for the grown-up woman, and she interests me enormously,” says Smith. “I now have a fabulous chance to draw in these women, talk to them…turn them on….”

Designer clonesNicole Kidman’s embroidered cheongsam Os-car gown designed by John Galliano for Christian Dior, Courtney Love’s slinky silver sheath Versace gown and Sigourney Weaver’s burgundy silk number designed by Rodriguez for Cerruti, are no longer exclusives. The chance to dress like a Hollywood goddess is being made possible for all and sundry by ABS, a California design company, which is currently wowing Americans with its OscarWatch collection, a range of glitzy gowns that are glamourous lookalikes of the most coveted gowns worn at this year’s Academy awards ceremony at a fraction of the original cost. According to Allen Bruce Schwartz, who came up with the idea: “A new breed of actresses, the likes of Patricia Arquette, Gwyneth Paltrow and Clare Danes, has changed the fashion game in Hollywood. The look is about simplicity and elegance no more schmaltzy clothing.” He doesn’t care much for what people think of him, nor has he time for people who spend £3,000 on a designer dress. “Stupid! Trend suckers,” is all he can say for them. And no doubt most of his clients agree.

End of glory daysSir Lawrence Olivier’s favourite haunt for 13 years, the Old Vic, one of Britain’s most venerated and cursed theatres, is once again in trouble. The theatre has been put up for sale to the highest bidder, 15 years after two Canadians snatched it from under the noses of office developers and kept it alive. The theatre, was built in 1818 by speculators avoiding West End rates and hoping the fashionable people would travel south of the Thames. They never did, and the Old Vic survived only by cramming 4,000 people into an auditorium that holds 1,000 today and suffered riots, fires and financial scandals. The National Theatre set up shop under Sir Lawrence Olivier in 1963 and the next 13 years were the Old Vic’s glory days. John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson, Richard Burton and Vivien Leigh all stepped on its boards, But after the National got its own home on the South Bank, the Old Vic was once again threatened with closure until the Canadians took it over. Today, if no purchaser emerges, the theatre could go dark’ or even be redeveloped, into some fear, a theme park.