FIVE aired an entertainingly trashy documentary about The Da Vinci Code last night, created primarily it would seem, to give viewers the cathartic pleasure of watching Brian Sewell say "apoplectic" just before the end credits.
I wonder how apoplectic he was when the Italianate frescoes he painted on the ceiling of Manzi's restaurant in the Docklands were painted over by vulgar tradesmen when the joint became a Spanish tapas bar?
Another high point in last night's programme was watching Sewell explain why Leonardo made the figure of St John (at Jesus' right in The Last Supper) so feminine that Dan Brown has been able to suggest that it is in fact Mary Magdalene.
"Because he was queer."
Aside from Sewell the other experts interviewed were a bogus bunch. One "historian" looked so much like a dot com Sales Director from '99 that he had to be filmed in the library of some kind of Gentlemen's club in order to paste on the missing aura of authority.
There was a power cut on the island last night, just as I was approaching the pier. I turned to look out of the boat's window and discovered that the north bank of the Thames had vanished. For a moment I suspected some sort of rogue fog bank, but then I detected the sharp outline of my own block and then the flicker of candle-light in one or two of the windows below. By the time I had disembarked the lights on the river walkway were on again, and the narrow lanes and driveways behind it echoed to the eerie call of almost all the household burglar alarms in E14.
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