The Times - UK (2022-03-18)

the times | Friday March 18 2022 33

An antipodean claim to the title of the

world’s biggest potato has been cooked.

Guinness World Records has ruled that

a giant specimen unearthed in New

Zealand is not a potato at all but a tuber.

Colin and Donna Craig-Brown made

the 7.8kg discovery last August on their

farm near Hamilton. They named their

find Dug, and it quickly rose from local

celebrity to international fame.

However, after months of rooting for

their discovery, Guinness has told the

couple that Dug is an imitator.

An email sent to the couple stated:

“Sadly the specimen is not a potato and

is in fact the tuber — a type of gourd.

For this reason we do unfortunately

Biggest potato record lies in tatties

have to disqualify the application.” Mr

Craig-Brown said: “Initially we were

just both gobsmacked and quite deflat-

ed. I felt really deflated. I felt, ‘Oh,

damn, how can they say that about

Dug? That’s just blasphemy.’ ”

“He’s still the world’s big-

gest not-a-potato. I refer

to him as Dug the Dom-

inator from Down

Under.”

The revelation

means that the

record for the largest

potato remains

4.98kg for a specimen

grown in 2011 by Peter

Glazebrook, a noted expert in giant

vegetables, in Nottinghamshire.

The Craig-Browns are still storing

Dug in their freezer. “I say g’day to him

every time I pull out some sausages,”

Mr Craig-Brown said. “He’s a

cool character. Whenever

the grandchildren come

round they say, ‘Can we

see Dug?’ ”

In an appearance

on ITV’s This Morn-

ing in January,

Craig-Brown de-

scribed unearthing

the tuber with a

garden fork: “Like an

angry Viking, I thrust it

into the ground and

caught me a giant potato.”

New Zealand

James Callery

“Dug” the potato is a type

of gourd, says Guinness

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‘boycotted’ for trans views

Gallego told The Times. “Since the topic

of gender identity and of assigned

genders can’t be questioned... they’ve

cancelled the class.”

Trans rights are an acrimonious topic

in Spain as the government prepares a

bill that would radically alter rights for

trans people. However, some people

think it could be manipulated by men

and endanger women. It was presented

to parliament in July and will be debat-

ed this year.

If passed, Spain would become the

largest European country to let people

over the age of 16 change their legal

gender without having to undergo hor-

mone therapy or get a medical diag-

nosis confirming gender dysphoria.

The proposed law has divided the

feminist movement in Spain. In

Madrid, marches for Women’s Day

were split into two rallies, divided over

issues such as gender identity, trans

laws and whether prostitution should

be outlawed.

Gallego said she is worried about the

impact of allowing men to change gen-

der so easily and what that could mean

for women’s prisons and sports. She also

said universities had become “markets

for degrees” where the students were

“customers who are always right”.

A statement issued by the master’s

programme organisers said students

had not attended her class because they

were not interested and therefore it

could not be considered “a censorship

or boycott”. They also said that Gallego

“holds positions far removed from the

majority line of the master’s degree”.

said that reform was necessary to pro-

tect the nation’s cinemas: “The sorts of

films we created until recently... that

system isn’t viable in the long-term.”

Despite the warnings from Safaee

and his supporters, President Macron’s

government is trying to protect the

system. Netflix was pressured last

month into signing a deal that commits

it to spending 4 per cent of its revenues

in France on French-language films.

End your arthouse

obsession, French

film-makers told

The French tradition of arthouse films

must be adapted to making blockbust-

ers to compete with the likes of Netflix,

a leading producer claims.

Ardavan Safaee, 41, chairman of the

production company Pathé, which

owns one of France’s biggest cinema

chains, urged directors to dilute their

intellectual pretensions in the quest to

lure more filmgoers. “To attract the

public, France needs films that are

more spectacular,” he said.

His comments follow the release of

Notre-Dame Brûle (Notre-Dame is

Burning), a blockbuster on the fire that

partially destroyed the Paris cathedral

in 2019. French cinemas hope that it

will be a home-grown champion to rival

The Batman, just released.

Yet Safaee’s words defy the legacy of

directors such as Éric Rohmer, Jean-

Luc Godard and François Truffaut. His

observation adds to a heated debate

over claims that the country’s subsi-

dised film industry is producing too

many films that few people want to see.

In 2020, French films received

€666.2 million in subsidies, mainly

generated by a tax on television chan-

nels and a levy on cinema tickets.

Proponents say the system ensures

that France has more cinemas than al-

most any other European country —

more than 2,000 compared with fewer

than 1,000 in the UK. It also means that

four out of ten French filmgoers watch

an independent home-made film, a

higher proportion than in other big

European countries.

Opponents say, however, that the

subsidies are producing a glut of un-

watched movies. A total of 391 French

films were released in 2019, many only

being shown for a few days or weeks

before disappearing from cinemas.

A recent report by the National

Cinema Centre found that the number

of films made in the country each year

had grown steadily from the 146 in 1990.

But more than half attracted fewer than

50,000 filmgoers. Arthouse films rep-

resented 56 per cent of the films re-

leased in France in 2019 but attracted

only 28 per cent of filmgoers. Safaee

Adam Sage Paris

Obama goes wild on

Netflix nature series

Page 34

Western Australia. The lake, which is fed by the sea and by freshwater springs, attracts algae that give it its unusual colour

Le blockbuster

spells disaster

Analysis

T

he French simply don’t

do blockbusters. They

can’t. They possess an

innate resistance to the

intellectual numbness

required to reach every seat in

the multiplex (Kevin Maher

writes). When they try to go big

and spectacular it’s invariably a

disaster. Think of Luc Besson’s

$200 million flop sci-fi from 2017,

Valerian and the City of a

Thousand Planets. Marketed as a

new French Matrix, it was garish,

misguided, and dramatically

flaccid. Other French wannabe

blockbusters included the action

movie The Crimson Rivers, the

horror comedy Brotherhood of

the Wolf, and the crime flick

Dobermann, all united by an

oddly derivative quality. It’s the

difference between Elvis belting

out Jailhouse Rock and Johnny

Hallyday singing Le Rock’n’Roll.

If you want to see a movie that’s

exquisitely made and doesn’t

care a jot about competing with

The Batman, see Jaques Audiard’s

Paris, 13th District. It won’t make

big money, of course, but thank

France for that.

Kevin Maher is The Times’s chief

film critic

JAMES MADDOCK/CATERS NEWS