Potraits — Not ready for burial

But thinnies were his greatest obsession, another aspect of his work that caught the imagination of the modern fashion world. He wanted his models pencil thin and, incredibly, rejected Audrey Hepburn more than once, as `too fat”, finally using her for his photographs of the 1948 Spring collections.

Extreme fashion

Jean Paul Gaultier, often described as the enfant terrible of French fashion whose sartorial accolades by now include putting the style back into the city pinstripe, employing underwear as outerwear, and making tattoos and body piercings acceptable — is making inroads into the film world. His collaboration with director Luc Besson on the sci-fi blockbuster The Fifth Element is the talk of the town.

And he has nothing but praise for the director. "I was knowing his movies and liking very much his visual point of view,” he says in his cartoon English as explanation for accepting the job. As for Bruce Willis, Gaultier confirms that he is also "very nice. He knows very well his body. He is very sexy and it is not very difficult to make him even more sexy”.

And Gary Oldman, who was forced to endure a Hitler haircut and unflattering disc of Plexiglas welded to the side of his face throughout the film, is not just nice, but is "great, great, great. Fantastic. He was frightened of nothing”.

Not in the race

Holly Hunter, the Oscar-winning star of David Cronenberg’s controversial film Crash, is unperturbed by the deluge of criticism the film is receiving, particularly in Britain.

Thirty-nine-year-old Hunter plays Dr Remington in the film, whose relationship with the James Spader character begins only after her husband is killed in a car crash in which he is also injured. From then on, they share an obsession with car crashes. "Human beings are not made up just of great and good impulses and fantasies.

I refuse to let somebody tell me that we should only investigate the half that is whole and light.” Hunter — who has tasted superstardom, in 1987 with Broadcast News and Raising Arizona, in 1993 with an Oscar for The Piano, a nomination for The Firm, and an Emmy for Murdering Mom — has never made commercial choices and has been called an actor’s actor. But despite her non-commercial leanings, she says: "I would love to be considered a mainstream actress — the view would be so much larger — but my tastes are too divergent for me to be in the mainstream constantly.”

Hard-core music

Bob Guccione Jr, the son of Bob Guccione Sr, who built a soft-core publishing empire around Penthouse magazine, has just joined the ranks of America’s media multimillionaires by pulling off the publishing coup of the decade.

Twelve years ago, Bob Jr persuaded his father to help him launch a music magazine called Spin. Two years ago, as the magazine was still losing money, Guccione Sr withdrew his money and the two men have not spoken since.

Bob Jr was left with nothing more than the title he had registered for — 20, but he soon found new investors. Spin lost only one issue in 1987 and went on to establish itself as a hugely successful monthly, focused on the alternative music scene.

Last week, after months of negotiations, the magazine was sold for — 28 million to a company headed by Quincy Jones, the musician and impresario, and Guccione became a multi-milionaire overnight.But it seems Guccione Jr’s ultimate ambition in life is not to be a media moghul.

The man who spent 13 years of his childhood in London and most of it watching games at Stamford Bridge, says: "I want to be chairman of the Chelsea football club. That would be my ultimate.” And he still refers to Chelsea players as "the sacred sons of heaven”.

Father’s day off

Jakob Dylan is a member of the second generation of rock stars which includes Ziggy Marley, Julian Lennon, Louise Goffin, Wilson-Phillips and Jeff Buckley, the extravagantly talented son of the great 1970s singer-songwriter Tim Buckley, who died recently.

And like others in this group, he is insistent that that people keep off the subject they’re most interested in, his background. Dylan, the singer-composer-figurehead of the Wallflowers, is Dylanesque both in looks and talent and explains his insistence thus: "If I don’t do it, the whole interview ends up being about my dad.”

In America, his celebrity background is beginning to fade as a subject of interest as the Wallflowers become more popular. Their second album, Bringing Down the Horse, has been well received and has sold well, chiefly because of the sweetly melancholic hit single 6th Avenue Heartache with Jakob’s Counting Crows pal Adam Duritz.

But then the artists of Counting Crows have themselves frequently been likened to Bob Dylan and the album evinces shades of Tom Petty, one of Dylan Sr’s better friends, and Bruce Springsteen, originally marketed as "the new Bob Dylan”. So, it seems, for Jakob Dylan, there’s no escaping his father’s shadow.

Catching hay fever with the stars

A Galaxy of world-class writers, historians, actors, poets, philosophers and comedians attended the 10th Sunday Times Hay Festival on the Welsh borders recently. By its close, it had proved to be a triumphant success, with 163 events attracting a record number of 33,000 people.

Although ever more professionally run, the festival retains the spirit of an enlarged village fete, albeit one where celebrity guests are not local stars but Jackie Collins, Kate Adie or Ralph Fiennes. The hottest ticket this year was travel writer Bill Bryson. He was so sought after that some rock-style access-all-areas festival passes had to carry the proviso "Not Bill Bryson”.

After Bryson on the sought-after list was Fiennes, who faced an enormous queue of admirers and signed more than 350 copies of his late mother Jennifer Leash’s novel Blood Ties. But film fame has its price, and one audience member asked him why a newspaper profile had suggested he never smiled. It seems the festival and the Mediterranean sunshine which blessed the festival all week were clearly working on him as he beamed: "I am smiling now.”