7/12/06

Dear Diana

I have at last seen "Keeping Mum" and was happy to see that the producers had seen fit to dedicate the movie to the memory of James Booth.

The film itself isn't as bad as some critics have made out, it's just not as good as, say, "Waking Ned Devine" for example. Maggie Smith is very good in the movie, and quite frankly James Booth is very underused in it.

Still, it was good to see him in what would be his final role, (a far cry from his heady Henry Hook/Zulu days though!)

Many fans were apparently shocked at how old he looked in the movie, however, he was playing a scruffy old man so probably would have been made-up to look older than he actually was! We Brits have seen him grow older a little slower than some through seeing him in UK TV series such as Lovejoy and The Bill over the last few years, so it wasn't such a shock to us seeing him looking so frail.

By the way, the Welsh actor Kenneth Griffith died very recently aged 84.

You may remember him playing the part of Seely, the child killer, in Revenge.

All the best - Iwan Williams