8 NEWS People
THE WEEK 24 August 2019Corden’s progress
When he wasayoung boy,
James Corden remembers
watchingaplay and thinking:
“Well,thisis incredibly boring,
sitting down here when you
could be up there.” And his life
has been an all-out pursuit of
“up there” ever since, says
Tom Lamont in GQ. Early in
his career, Corden (below) was
asuccessful supporting actor,
but he wanted to bealeading
man. “I was learning that if
you looked like me, people
reckoned you were about right
for playinganewsagent in a
Hugh Grant movie... Nobody
was about to pullaseat out at
the table and say, ‘Come and
sit down.’Iwas going to have
to get to this table and budge
people up.” So he co-wrote his
own comedy,Gavin&Stacey,
and, withafew hiccups along
the way, he now finds himself
at the pinnacle of US showbiz:
hostingThe Late Late Show
for CBS. In an average week,
he’ll interview Tom Hanks
and Ian McKellen, and do a
sketch with Michelle Obama.
Learning how to deal with his
own fame, he has been inspired
by the time he met Bryan
Cranston, the star ofBreaking
Bad,before anyone in America
knew who he, Corden, was. At
arestaurant, he shuffled over
to Cranston and said: “Excuse
me, Bryan, you don’t know
me but...”. Cranston was
“amazing”–polite and
charming. Today, Corden
always uses the “Cranston
Model”. “I understand the
version of me that people want
to meet and I’ll give them that
and that’s all right. Because
it’s actually harder, it’s
morework to be rude
and abrupt.”On female authority
After more thanadecade
as high mistress of
St Paul’s Girls’
School–a
London private
school which
usually tops
the exam
league tables
–Clarissa Farr
knowsabit
about female
authority.
Farr, who
retired in
2017, thinks
that social
attitudes are still
profoundly unfair.While “aggressive male
leaders are admired”, female
aggression is “feared or
lampooned”, she told Eleanor
Mills in The Sunday Times.
“There are certain caricatures
of women in charge –
unattractive, loud, shrewish,
nothing compelling or inspiring
–that persist.” If you Google
the term CEO, she says, “the
images are all white men with
grey hair”. By contrast,
“beauty is part of successful
leadership for women inaway
it shouldn’t be”. She mentions
Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg
and Helena Morrissey of
Legal&General. “Women
still have to use their
intelligence very carefully so
it is not threatening. Brain
power and being too quick
verbally is detrimental to
female authority.” What will
make it better? “We need to
see more authentic, normal-
looking leaders such as Angela
Merkel,” she says, “with
uncompromising confidence
that says: ‘This is whoIam,
this is whatIam.’”Trials ofabig spender
He’s known for his eccentric
spending sprees: buying castles,
exotic pets andapyramid
tomb in New Orleans. But
Nicolas Cage can explain
everything–ornearly
everything, says David
Marchese in The New York
Times. The octupuses weren’t
particularly extravagant.
“What is an octopus, $80?”
The cobras seemed likeagood
idea at the time, but “they’d
lunge at me”, so they had to be
rehomed inazoo. He bought
two castles, because he
was onapersonal “grail
quest”–which has since
been suspended. One
purchase, though, was
definitelyamistake. “The
dinosaur skull was
unfortunate,” he
admits, “because
Idid spend
$276,000 on
that.Ibought
it at a
legitimate
auction and
found out
it was
abducted
from Mongolia
illegally.” He
decided to return
it. “I never got
my money back.
That stank.”When Franky Zapata was hurtling through the air towards the
white cliffs of Dover at more than 100mph, his feet strapped to a
jet-powered hoverboard, he started thinking about Brexit. “You see
things in the news every day about Brexit, and it’s easy to imagine
that we are two different countries very far apart,” he tells Ben
Machell in The Times, in heavily accented English. “But we’re not!
We are very close! We are neighbours! We are brothers! We even
share the same sea.” When he touched down in St Margaret’s Bay
after his successful crossing from France,asmall crowd was
waiting. “The English were amazing. The first thing someone asked
was ifIwantedacup of coffee.” The journey was tricky–hehad bad
cram pinhis legs –but it wa smuchbette rthanthe last attempt. That
time, as he tried to refuel onamid-Channel platform, he was flung
into the sea. His board pulled him down, and his lifejacket prevented
him taking off his helmet, which filled with water. “The only way for
me to breathe was to drink the water in my helmet,” he says. “So I
drank about five litres of seawater.” It wasa“scary and crazy”
moment. But now he has crossed the Channel, he wants to set new
records. “I think the challenge isn’t horizontal, it’s vertical.Iwant to
take off from the sea and go 2,000 metres high.Iwant to surf the
clouds,” he says, grinning. “That’s whatIwant to do now.”Viewpoint:
Holidays
“When the Greens’ co-leader Siân Berry
says we should be limited to one flight
ayear, Isuspect this is the change many
cannot make. I’ll switch to an electric
car, cycle, give up meat–just don’t tell
me Ican’t see Patagonia or Japan before
Idie. After clearing out my childhood
home, I’ve concluded most physical stuff
will end up in landfill, but holidays are
time and money rarely wasted. They
measure your passing years from
backpacking youth to Rhine-cruise old
age. And when you have children they
are the golden times: only when away
from chores, work and friends do you
feel the shape and weight of your family,
know who you really are, forge in-jokes
and memories that will endure.”
Janice Turner in The TimesFarewell
Princess Christina
of the Netherlands,
Dutch Royal, died
16 August, aged 72.
Peter Fonda,actor
who co-created the
counter-culture film
Easy Rider,died 16
August, aged 79.
John Robert
Schrieffer,
physicist who
shared the Nobel
Prize in 1972, died
27 July, aged 88.
Richard Williams,
Oscar-winning
Roger Rabbit
animator, died
16 August, aged 86.Desert Island Discsreturns in the autumn