(I blame the screenwriters, Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, who deserve a slap on the wrist.) Its key sequence, much as in Oliver Stone’s loopy diatribe, shows the coverage of a prison riot. The latter group will have been left only half-satisfied: although you could snog your way through most of it without losing track of the story, the on-screen smooching lacks all conviction.Robert Redford, as Warren Justice – yes, Warren Justice; they might as well have thrown caution to the wind and called him Warren Peace – the supposedly brilliant newshound who is Tally’s employer, mentor and lover, hasn’t looked so somnambulistic since, oh, Legal Eagles. None of the character modes Redford tries out, from the Dorian Gray twinkle to the Bob Woodward jutted jaw, manages to coax anything like the requisite soppy feelings about Warren’n'Tally, and that amorous chill-out is more than the film can handle: you’re left at a loose end, thinking grumpily about the plot.After To Die For and Broadcast News and even, Lord help us, Natural Born Killers, it is remarkable to encounter a media movie that doesn’t nurse the meekest scepticism about the ultimate value of boob-tube reportage, or the psyches of those who thrive in the medium, but Up Close & Personal is that beast. Reports that Up Close went to the top of the US box office must indicate either that audiences there will shell out to see Michelle Pfeiffer in a romantic role no matter how pedestrian its setting (an understandable weakness; she’s dismayingly gorgeous even in those heavy-metal curls), or that decent date movies have been so thin on the ground lately that courting couples were pulled in by sheer frustration.

Shamefully, the two most important credits on the movie are buried deep below “additional make-up”: “Ms Pfeiffer’s hairstyles designed by Alan D’Angerio and Peter Owen.” Take a bow, chaps.
Trichologists apart, it’s hard to guess who would find this load of coiffures seductive. From scene to scene, they grow shorter, straighter, neater and – a close approximation to a joke, this – into a jet-black hoplite’s helmet, until her career finally attains the twin capstones of an honours ceremony and a consummately professional bob. But as Sallyann, or “Tally” as she is soon nastily rechristened, fights her way up from spouting gauche inanities on local television news to spouting slick inanities on network news, her tresses undergo sympathetic mutation. When Sallyann Atwater (Michelle Pfeiffer), an ingenue fresh from a Reno trailer park, first staggers into a low-rent televison station in Miami, she’s sporting a miniature avalanche of blonde ringlets that the late Marc Bolan might have judged a trifle showy. Second I now know what to shout back as I pass a building site But that, my lovelies, I’m not telling.. Jon Avnet’s Up Close & Personal (15) pretends to be concerned with a number of meaty issues – the hunger to excel, the eternal conflict between love and duty, the ever more urgent need to assert solid journalistic values in America’s ever more frothy mass media Actually, it’s about hairdos.

The rest of the job passed by in virtual silence and we parted enemies. But I learned two very useful things during my time as a builder. First that builders are just the same as City gents, only more honest. They hated me (“I never want to meet another bird like you again,” was Sam’s parting shot). But now I had shown him up in front of his friends; and the others, in a fever of “phew, that could have been me”, took his side Provocation was not to be my defence. That Friday afternoon, just before knocking-off time, I had had enough.

I hadn’t spoken for much of the day, bored by their childish banter “Oooh, she’s all quiet She needs a good ride on My Little Pony,” spat Jack “OK Jack,” I said “Get them off and let’s do it Here.” “Ay?” he said, dusty face suddenly crestfallen. “Well you’ve been going on all week about the size of your dick, so it’d better be good.”Of course he didn’t – he wasn’t going to risk his friends finding out that his Little Pony was One Small Vermicelli. They watched for my reaction; there wasn’t one, so they egged each other on more. Who could use the f-word the most? Would I flinch when they used words like c–t and split beavers? I didn’t. What do you want me to wear, a marble wash-denim mini?” Stupid question – the answer was yes.