Wise after the event

I have to get something off my chest, something that has been haunting me now for four years. I need to apologise to Greg Wise.
I don’t know Greg Wise but I know who he is. You must do too. He’s an actor, now married to Emma Thompson, who played the dashing villain in the movie of “Sense and Sensibility”. Yes, him. The one on the horse.

Sloshing goblets

At this time of year, especially in an age of deep arts funding cuts, I suppose it’s normal to ask yourself if you’re a half-full or half-empty person in the glass department. Pressed for an answer, my response would be that most new years I feel like someone whose full glass has been half-emptied because the over-enthusiastic baritone next to me has just bumped my elbow as he launches into another verse of one of my least favourite opera things – The Drinking Song.