They were mobbed by teenage girls throughout their U.S. tour and have become instant heartthrobs.

So it isn’t surprising that One Direction’s debut album have been brought forward per week in America.

After spending the week promoting their music inside the US the X Factor finalists arrived back in England today and had clearly been missing British food.

The boys stepped off their plane and
made sure that their first stop was at a supermarket in order that they could get
some good quaint English food.

The five-piece boy band should have been famished after the long-haul flight and made a fast pit-stop at Tesco supermarket where they picked up some essentials.

Curly haired Harry Styles showed that he doesn’t care much for watching his figure as he tucked in to a small pie and with a mouthful of pastry he smiled contently.

Escorted by just a few minders the men walked back to their car now fully satisfied with a belly filled with deli snacks.

Zayn Malik gave the impression to have returned from America with a brand new habit and was spotted with a cigarette in his mouth as he crossed the line.

For once, the Gotta Be You singers weren’t surrounded or chased by any female fans, perhaps because most in their fan base would were at school .

Nevertheless, the chart-toppers have made quite an impression over the Atlantic and identical to Simon Cowell once predicted, they seem like they are going to be successful around the pond.

Stateside fans should be ready to purchase Up All Night on March 13.

Their number 1 single What Makes You Beautiful, might be released within the U.S. one February 14.

The video for the hit song has already garnered over 47 Million views on VEVO and should have its U.S. broadcast premiere on Nickelodeon next Saturday in the course of the network’s primetime Valentine’s-themed night.

The boys were swarmed by fans during
their visit to L. a. where they filmed an episode of popular
series iCarly with the show’s star, Miranda Cosgrove.

The crowds of screaming girls were so big, the band was ushered through LAX yesterday, out of view from their followers.

Liam tweeted: ‘Sorry to anyone who was on the airport security wouldn’t allow us to out that way so frustrating!!’

The boys are back in London to organize to advertise their upcoming single Something, that’s released on February 13.

But while the gang are referred to as an equal five-piece on home soil, it emerged over the week that their US management are keen to place forward cheeky Harry because the ‘frontman,’ citing that boybands in America which have a recognised frontman are inclined to make it bigger than those who don’t.

Harry led the band after they filmed iCarly, with the most character developing a crush on him.

A source told The Daily Star: ‘Columbia music execs are rubbing their hands with glee. It feels like One Direction are going to be absolutely massive in America.

‘They decided way back that Harry is a natural frontman. He’s funny, confident and has an outstanding voice.’

But the gang are keen to paste together. a pal told the newspaper: ‘They are determined to hold at the way they’ve been with out a lead singer. Harry certainly hasn’t asked for all this attention.’

The band might be back inside the States next month to support boyband Big Time Rush.

Nicola Roberts has voiciferously defended Cheryl Cole over MC Harvey’s claims he has emails proving they’d a secret relationship – by jokingly claiming the previous X Factor judge would rather have phone sex.

Cheryl’s Girls Aloud bandmate weighed in at the So Solid rapper after her friend became embroiled in an unseemly Twitter row with So Solid Crew rapper Harvey.

The rapper and previous husband of Britain’s Got Talent judge Alesha Dixon claimed they shared a romance in 2010 when she split from ex-husband Ashley Cole.

When she denied the relationship, he said he had emails to prove it.

Speaking out concerning the drama, Nicola tweeted last night: ‘Emails..?? i believe someone’s been having you on mate..’

She then added: ‘#shedoesntdoemailsshedoesphonesex.’

Cheryl re-tweeted the 2 comments and added: ‘spat my tea out* Lmfao..’

Yesterday, she wrote on her Twitter page she was baffled by news in their apparent romance in a mag interview this week.

She said: ‘Was this “relationship” happening on your head @harveyofficial?! Are you smoking something?

‘@harveyofficial i believe I’ve met you once maybe twice at public events and Along with your wife!! #s**tjustgetsweirder.’

A short while later, Harvey tweeted back: ‘Do you certainly want me to tweet a number of the messages you emailed me @cherylcole pipe down and prevent playing the saint in front of your fans.

‘I had your back @cherylcole until you sent that s**t. Disappointed in you if the general public seen these emails you’ll turn out to be with egg in your face.

‘And let’s get this straight @cherylcole i do not need no hype of you! I’d rather go broke and work in Sainsbury’s than speak about your own s**t.

‘This will not be a twitter beef. I still
have massive respect for @cherylcole but you mustn’t of tweeted that
knowing we both have personal messages to eachother #silenceinthecourt.’

He
continued: ‘Its funny how the hype has calmed down since i discussed
the emails. Where I come from we do not snitch I’d rather die than sell
my soul #simples.’

To make things awkward, Cheryl have been friends with Harvey’s ex-wife Alesha Dixon and the mummy of his child, Javine Hylton.

Harvey, 32,
claimed he had a secret romance with Cheryl in late 2010 – during her
last series of The X Factor.

The
non-league footballer, real name Michael Harvey Jnr, said their
relationship befell round the same time Cheryl was associated with
American dancer Derek Hough.

He tells the recent issue of Now magazine: ‘There was a relationship and an attraction to every other’s aura…

‘She’s an excellent girl. We have got a terrific respect for every other.’

While Harvey refused to be drawn into an excessive amount of detail on their apparent fling, he said that they had been friends for years before they grew closer after Cheryl’s split from husband Ashley.

He recalled: ‘We started confiding in one another. plenty
of it was like: “We won’t trust anyone on the market, so we’re just gonna
trust one another.”

Although Harvey declined to assert where they went on dates, he admitted he was honest together with his opinion about Cheryl’s her vocal ability.

He said: ‘We spoke of music. I told her: “Cheryl, you have not got the strongest vocals, but…” You are able to
chill with Cheryl, man. She’s just cool.’

The allegedly burgeoning romance apparently came to an abrupt halt when Cheryl signed to follow Simon Cowell as a judge on X Factor USA.

With her divorce, battle with malaria and new job in a brand new country, Harvey says they decided to part ways.

Harvey explained: ‘We’ve both had trouble in relationships.
i used to be scared. i used to be thinking: “Am I ready for all this again?” Someone
got wind of it and wrote on my Twitter: ‘Cheryl, don’t go together with that
c***.’ So we knew what could happen. That kind of thing made me
frightened.

‘I cracked up when people said she was with Derek Hough. i used to be like: “You’re to this point off!”‘

Alesha and Harvey married in a lavish ceremony in June 2005 after five years of dating.

However,
after just 17 months of marriage, Alesha was devastated when she found
out her husband was having an affair along with his Daddy Cool West End
co-star Javine Hylton.

Javine
- who narrowly missed out on a spot in Girls Aloud with Cheryl in TV show
Popstars: The Rivals – and Harvey soon moved in together and their
daughter Angel was born in February 2008.

However, they too split a year and a half later, with Javine claiming his ‘infidelity’ was in charge.

Wilkinson will play the Bishop of Digne. ‘He shows Valjean the line ahead, after Valjean has robbed him of silver candlesticks,’ says Cameron Mackintosh, who produced the musical on stage and who’s also involved with Working Title and Universal in making the image, which Oscar-winner Tom Hooper will direct.

‘“I even have bought your soul for God!” the bishop says to Valjean — and it’s moment,’ Cameron told me.

Wilkinson, who played Valjean in London and on Broadway, said that as he is taking at the role of the bishop, his journey with Les Miserables has ended ‘and i’ve come full circle’.

Cameron also revealed that Ruffelle will play ‘one of the most fabulous whore’ within the movie, and while she won’t have a song of her own, she is going to be a part of the gang of prostitutes who sing the number Lovely Ladies.

Some 27 years after Les Miserables was first staged on the Barbican, the show remains running — now on the Queens within the West End.

Cameron noted that Alan Parker was going to direct a film of it     23 years ago but, for numerous reasons, it didn’t exercise session.

‘The gods have made the timing right, in that now we have the right Jean Valjean in Hugh, and the complete feeling about musicals has changed,’ he told me.

Hooper has already spent three weeks working with Jackman on his characterisation.

The director may be in La for this weekend’s Director’s Guild awards before heading back to London to take charge of rehearsals at Pinewood studios next week, where he  will work along with his cast for  seven weeks.

Russell Crowe, playing Inspector Javert, can be arriving next week, together with Anne Hathaway (Fantine), Eddie Redmayne (Marius), Amanda Seyfried (Cosette) and Aaron Tveit (Enjolras).

Other key roles are still in negotiation.

The stage show had 28 actors playing a number of roles, however the film, Cameron told me, can have scores of parts for West End performers.

‘It’s similar to when the musical Oliver! was being made and dozens — probably hundreds — of folks from London stage shows took part,’ Cameron said.

Filming of the script by William Nicholson, Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schonberg should be done at Pinewood, with some scenes shot on location within the UK. There’s also talk of a few filming being done in France.

Members of the Academy of Movie Arts and Sciences have shied clear of Shame — and that i say: Shame on them!

I think Steve McQueen’s movie — starring Michael Fassbender as a sex addict attempting to keep his secret from his friends and sister (played by Carey Mulligan) — is without doubt one of the best, most provocative movies to hit the screen in ages.

The films up for Oscars this year are tame by comparison. It’s as if Academy voters are scared of anything that smacks of danger.

What’s happened to the organisation that, once upon a time, went for pictures which include Midnight Cowboy?

They also ignored Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive and its star, Ryan Gosling.

And what in regards to the ferocious performance by Tilda Swinton in We have to Discuss Kevin? Or Charlize Theron in Young Adult? Or Elizabeth Olsen in Martha Marcy Mary Marlene? Or Felicity Jones in Like Crazy?

Then there’s Olivia Colman’s stunning portrait of a center-class woman whose self-esteem have been beaten out of her in Tyrannosaur?

And to close out Shailene Woodley, who plays George Clooney’s daughter within the Descendants, which opens inside the UK today, is perverse.

Also, i will be able to’t fathom why the Academy ignored Steven Spielberg’s direction of War Horse.

I hate to assert it, but i believe the voters of the Baftas and the Oscars became lazy.

Several friends in L. a., who’re members, have admitted they skipped watching a number of movies because they weren’t suitable for ‘family viewing’.

Well, in the event that they can’t attend screenings, they need to resign their memberships and let those that have the time, and the dedication, take their place.
It’s just shameful.

Rupert Friend will star inside the stage version of Dennis Potter’s controversial Seventies play Brimstone And Treacle.

The film version was banned from BBC TV, although I got to peer it a long time ago, with Sting as Martin, a handsome but strange young man who turns up on the home of a pair who live with their daughter, who’s in a coma.

The woman is sexually assaulted by Martin — the role Rupert will play — which prompts a bunch of fascinating consequences.

I once talked to Potter in regards to the piece, and he said Martin was a Devil-like character ‘wrapped up within the face of an angel’.

Mr Friend could be directed by Amelia Sears on the Arcola Theatre Studio 2 in London, with performances from May 2.

Rebecca Hall learned to shimmy for some lap-dancing scenes in her new film, Lay The fave. She plays real-life gambler Beth Raymer, who had a head for figures and a figure to check. ‘She’s a stripper who goes to Las Vegas to work.

‘There’s a method you should dip and bend, and that i needed to the best way to do this,’ Rebecca told me.

Lay The favourite, directed by Stephen Frears, played last weekend on the Sundance Film Festival.

‘Actually, it was the worst place shall we think about,’ cuts in Marks. ‘I went there last year, so i do know what I’m talking about.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t accept as true with that,’ Gran protests. ‘However the clincher was it was on the subject of the large U.S. Air Force base at Lakenheath, which within the Sixties, when the tale is decided, was one of the crucial glamorous place in England.

‘All those dashing American airmen with their big cars, big wallets and flash ways were an irresistible magnet for young girls.’

The story that Marks and Gran devised was simple: two teenage sisters from Luton are within the Suffolk town for per week’s holiday from their dull assembly-line jobs. As they shelter from the rain at the promenade, a handsome GI invites them to a dance on the base. ‘Elvis would be playing,’ he tells them.

‘Oh yes? Pull the opposite one!’ they scoff.

‘It’s true,’ he tells them solemnly. ‘I swear on my mother’s eyesight.’

The girls are hooked. 

‘He forgets to say that the promised Elvis is an unknown drummer — one Elvis Simpkins,’ says Marks. ‘However the girls don’t care: suddenly they find themselves living the yankee dream.

‘Love blossoms, bringing with it parental objections, but with Sixties’ hits belting out every couple of minutes, everyone’s cares get drowned in music.’

The show, which opens an extended nationwide tour in Bromley, Kent, tonight, is the newest in a protracted line of successful stage productions in keeping with pop songs, including We’ll Rock You, Mamma Mia, Jersey Boys and — another Sixties’ rock-fest written by Marks and Gran — Dreamboats And Petticoats.

The title, Save The Last Dance For Me, was successful for The Drifters in 1960 and was written by Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, whose songs are featured within the show. Their hits include Teenager In Love, Viva Las Vegas, Suspicion and may’t Get Used To Losing You. Marks, 63, and Gran, 62, met after they both joined a youth club in North London on the age of ten. ‘i used to be the spotty one, he was the fat kid,’ says Marks.

Marks became a journalist, Gran a civil servant, and that they churned out scripts without much luck. Their break came after they were asked to write down for Frankie Howerd.

‘He was a pleasant man, but hard to work for,’ says Gran. ‘We were writing his radio series while looking to hold down our day jobs. The strain was so bad that I’d be sitting there choosing the music for my funeral.’

The pair wrote an ITV sitcom called Shine On Harvey Moon, which drew 17 million viewers and teamed Linda Robson with Pauline Quirke — a pairing such a success that they went directly to write Birds Of A Feather for them.

Goodnight Sweetheart — with Nicholas Lyndhurst as a time traveller — happened after Marks remarked that some buildings in London’s East End still showed wartime bomb damage, not like the fashionable edifices only a few yards away.

Recruited by a U.S. TV network to jot down a sitcom, they discovered every gag they submitted was analysed to death. It wasn’t their style.

‘We’d been given a fine apartment and many money,’ says Marks, ‘but that life wasn’t for us. The simplest light moment came when we’d been kept awake by the loud piano-playing round the corner.

‘The chief promised he’d have a word with the occupant.

‘Later, he told us: “Mr Stevie Wonder says he’s sorry and it won’t happen again.”’

Save The Last Dance For Me opens at Bromley Churchill Theatre tonight. Tickets 0844 871 7651. Other venues:  www.kenwright.com

Holly Willoughby was left red-faced during a cookery demonstration in this Morning today, when she mispronounced one of the vital ingredients.

The 30-year-old presenter, who’s no stranger to breaking down in fits of giggles at the morning programme, was helping out chef Gino D’Acampo inside the kitchen when she made the error.

Referring to the cheese the pair were cooking their pork with, Holly called it ‘pecorina’ in preference to pecorino cheese.

However, Holly, who was also being aided by co-presenter Phillip Schofield, 49, was entirely unaware that during Italian, pecorina actually means a definite sort of sexual position.

Shocked D’Acampo hastily corrected her pronunciation but managed to gloss over the faux pas by telling her pecorina meant something different in Italian.

Gino, who was also being aided by co-presenter Phillip Schofield, 49, managed to gloss over the faux pas. 

A source said: ‘Holly innocently
noted pecorino as pecorina which has a wholly different meaning
in Italian. It refers to having sex doggy style.

‘Gino corrected Holly on air but didn’t tell her what the mistake noted. He did well to maintain a straight face.’

Soon after Holly’s mistake, This Morning guest presenter Jenni Falconer took to Twitter to poke fun on the mispronunciation.

She tweeted: ‘Lucky @ginofantastico corrected @hollywills on @itvthismorning when she said pecorina…..means something altogether different!! LOL @schofe. It means getting jiggy with it!!! lol.’

She can have come second in Britain’s best-loved dancing competition.

But Chelsee Healey was the clear winner within the wardrobe department after channelling some serious old Hollywood glamour for the Strictly Come Dancing after-party in Blackpool.

The Waterloo Road actress looked stunning in a backless, floor-length gown and seriously glamorous up-do.

Although the 23-year-old’s outfit was black, there has been a flick of Strictly glamour within the type of a sash adorned with sparkling green sequins, that cascaded down her back.

Healey’s eye-makeup was swept as much as meet a cluster of sequins glued to her cheekbones while chandelier earrings added extra sparkle to the actress’s outfit.

McFly’s Harry Judd won the competition by just three points but as usual Healey, who partnered with Pasha Kovalev, was her modest self. 

‘I’m
really pleased with meself,’ she said before adding: ‘To know people actually like me is admittedly nice.’

Today the runner up took to her Twitter account to thank her fans and confess not to knowing what to do without Strictly.

She wrote: ‘Had the handiest time what am I going to do now their (sic) is not any strictly sad times xx can’t thank ever1 at the show enough costume m.up hair.’

While
Healey set an example of ways to get it right at the red carpet, fellow
competitor Nancy Dell’Olio and Strictly judge Alesha Dixon didn’t fare
quite so well.

Dell’Olio, 50,
poured her enviable figure into a different rubber dress, this time in
pillar-box red, while Dixon, 33, also chose a decent number in turquoise.

Italian-American Dell-Olio had earlier been
spotted with fellow ousted competitor Holly Valance at Farnborough
Airport waiting to board a personal jet to the Strictly final this
weekend.

Dell’Olio
seems to favour tight, rubber dresses having worn an identical black one to
the Erotica 2011 festival last month after which again on the Kamiliya
single launch party, held at Pulbrock & Gould in London earlier this
month.

The red number she chose for theStrictly party was corseted on the front and showed off her ample cleavage,
while her tiny frame was propped up on towering black Louboutins. 

Dell’Olio also wore a disc necklace featuring a couple of puckered lips while her right hand was weighed down by an announcement ring that was at risk of taking someone’s eye out.

Later the feisty property lawyer was
spotted getting as regards to professional dancer Brendan Cole, while she
drank a flute of champagne.

Meanwhile, Dixon also wore a decent, short dress for the after-party.

The sheeny number showed off her perfect pins but had a slightly unflattering sag round her chest, like an old vest top. 

She teemed the turquoise dress with baby pink platform shoes and dark nail polish.

Dixon was joined by men of the hour Strictly winner Judd and newly-crowned jungle king Dougie Poynter.

Before his winning dance, Judd had said: ‘I’ve been smiling all week. My Strictly experience was one of the important experiences of my life – I never thought I’d say that.

‘Strictly was refreshing and i have absolutely loved it. I’m very grateful.’

While bandmate Poynter said: ‘It’s like being a dad and watching your son play football for the primary time. You suspect, “Oh, that’s my boy!”‘

Daniel Radcliffe has skilfully
mastered the transition from Hogwarts boy hero to leading man status (on
film and Broadway)— but his girlfriend has torn him off a strip for not
being better across the house.

The star told me he was given a two-year deadline to get his domestic act together.

Daniel,
who opens in February within the sublime Gothic psychological thriller The
Woman In Black, spelled out to me what Rosie Coker, his girlfriend, told
him.

‘She says I have a deadline of two years to be like a fully-functioning human being around the house,’ he told me.

I
asked him what, exactly, that entailed. ‘I think it means I have to be
able to cook for myself better than I can at the moment, and it means I
can’t leave the house in a state the way I do.

‘I
didn’t promise her anything, but I have made it my mission to improve
myself. There’s certainly progress to be made,’ he joked, after
admitting that his talent as an actor far outweighed his ability to
function in the kitchen.

He
said a low point came when he was back in London a while ago and wolfed
down half a bowl of cereal before rushing off to catch an early flight.

A
week later, the bowl and the cereal were still there: congealed into a
rock-solid mess. ‘I tried to change after that, but it has been a slow
process,’ he says.

Rosie
has just finished working as a production assistant on Snow White And
The Huntsman starring Kristen Stewart and Charlize Theron. She arrived
in New York on Sunday.

I
asked whether Daniel had hired someone to clean his apartment for her
arrival. He blushed and made a startling confession. ‘My mum’s here and
she came round and tidied everything up for me.’

Seeing my incredulous expression, he
explained he had a good excuse: two performances on Saturday of his hit
musical How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying — plus a Sunday
matinee.

On those points he’s forgiven because the show, directed by Rob Ashford, is like running a marathon every day.

Daniel
and Rosie met on the Harry Potter set and have been close for more than
a year, though she has had to fly in to see him during his ten months
on Broadway.

‘She’s busy, I’m busy, but we’re making it work and it’s good. She’s helped me grow up and I love her very much.

Learning the domestic ropes: Daniel admitted that girlfriend Rosie Coker has been trying to teach him to become more domesticated

‘When
you find somebody as cool and as tolerant as my girlfriend then the
clear policy is to cling on to them for dear life,’ Daniel told me as we
sat in a diner not far from his apartment.

Daniel
and Rosie, both 22, also worked on The girl In Black together. The
film is based on the ghostly thriller written by Susan Hill.

As
directed by James Watkins it’s an elegant homage to the old Hammer
films. Indeed, it’s being released under the Hammer banner: the first
time that’s  happened in more than 20 years.

The
stage play it’s based on is still  running in the West End. Daniel
plays lawyer Arthur Kipps, who is sent to settle the estate of a
deceased client who lived in a remote mansion, accessible only by a
causeway.

Things go bump in the night, children die mysteriously and ghostly figures pop up to scare the bejesus out of you.

Though
the picture also features Ciaran Hinds and Janet McTeer, it really
hangs on Daniel’s shoulders — and he more than holds it up.

There’s
20 minutes in the middle where he’s on his own in the creaky old house
and has to react to increasingly creepy goings-on.

He
gives a remarkable performance — confirming the early promise evident
when he did Equus in the West End and on Broadway, and the later Potter
pictures.

Daniel says
he’s amazed he had ‘the cojones’ to do Equus (where he famously stripped
off on stage), but he feels  the play helped define him as an actor
prepared to take serious risks.

He
finishes in How To Succeed In Business on January 1. He’ll then do five
weeks of promotion on The Woman In Black, have three weeks off and then
prepare for the edgy independent movie Kill Your Darlings, in which he
will portray beat poet Allen Ginsberg.

He
also has a comedy lined up for  further down the road — and a third
project is being developed. After all that time playing Harry Potter he
doesn’t want to repeat himself again and his non-Potter choices all have
an edgy sensibility.

You
have to remember that he has worked with top-flight directors and
actors. Gary Oldman, David Thewlis, Imogen Stubbs, Emma Thompson and
Richard Griffiths became important influences.

It’s clear to me that Daniel has graduated to the grown-up ranks with honours.

He
may have many millions in the bank, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t
know how to work hard. Now he just needs to learn how to do the washing
up.

Out of The Archers into the arms of Dickens: Felicity Jones to play Oliver Twist author’s mistress

Author’s muse: Actress Felicity Jones is set to portray Charles Dickens’s mistress, Nelly Ternan

Ralph Fiennes has chosen fast-rising actress Felicity Jones to portray Charles Dickens’s mistress, Nelly Ternan, in a film about their secret affair.

Felicity, who was named Breakthrough Actor of the Year by judges at the Gotham Independent Film Awards in New York, is expected to start work on the picture in spring or summer of next year.

First, though, she’s set to work with Warren Beatty in a film about a young woman who had a romance with Howard Hughes towards the end of his life.

The Dickens movie is called The Invisible Woman and is based on Claire Tomalin’s detailed examination of the relationship between the author and Nelly, which lasted 13 years until the day of his death.

The project has long been developed by producers Stewart Mackinnon and Gaby Tana with BBC Films.

Ms Tana worked with Fiennes on The Duchess and his gripping directorial debut Coriolanus, which opens early in the New Year.

Fiennes is as natural behind the camera as he is in front of it — and he knows how to elicit first-class  performances from his cast.

Not that Felicity needs lessons. She had everybody chasing after her at the Sundance Film Festival back in January once they saw her performance in Drake Doremus’s film Like Crazy, playing a British student who begins a complicated romance with a fellow student.

Plus, she was utterly charming in the romantic comedy Chalet Girl (which is out on DVD and Blu-ray). And as if that wasn’t enough, Michael Grandage has directed her twice in major roles at  the Donmar.

The actress, who used to provide the voice of Emma on The Archers, has a stylish vibe about her.

She looked cool in a mint green cocktail dress, created for her by New York designers Proenza Schouler, and cream Calvin Klein high heels.

She beckoned me to a corner and said ‘Look at this! as she showed off the dress’s tiger-print inlay.

Are you a tigress, I wondered. ‘No, I’m a pussycat,’ she smiled.

Let’s leave it there.

      *****************************************************************************

I had a couple of hours to kill so I snuck into a cinema on 42nd Street — the only film that fitted into my schedule was The Muppets movie.

It’s so utterly charming that it was my guilty pleasure of the year. Kermit, with help from humans Jason Segel and Amy Adams, has to round up the old gang — including Miss Piggy, who’s got a great gig in Paris editing Vogue for the less than petite woman — so they can put on a show to save their old theatre. Ridiculous, but bliss.

        ******************************************************************************

Charlize Theron doesn’t mess around. She flew into New York to collect a prize from the Gotham Independent Film Awards and headed straight to the airport so she could arrive in London ahead of Wednesday’s big strike.

‘I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in a queue at Heathrow, so I’m getting out of town in a hurry,’ she told me.

Charlize is in the best actress race for her performance in Jason Reitman’s cracking black comedy Young Adult.

Broadway missed out on Blair’s soft shoe reshuffle

On Broadway: Hugh Jackman likes to drag a member of the audience on stage to dance with him

I Wonder how Tony Blair would have coped had Hugh Jackman pulled him up on stage and made him swivel  his hips?

The former prime minister attended a matinee performance of Jackman’s hot ticket Back On Broadway show  on Wednesday.

Jackman usually drags one or two members of the audience on stage and does a dance routine with them. I saw this happen when I caught the show in Toronto and it’s hilarious.

I caught it again in New York, on Wednesday night, and heard about the VIP visitor. Jackman had told that afternoon’s audience that Mr Blair was in the home.

There was a ripple of excitement because Americans revere the former PM.

Jackman shouted out that he voted for Blair while he was working in London doing Oklahoma! on the National, and Blair grinned. (As an Australian, Jackman could vote in a British General Election while living inside the UK.)

The actor is having the time of his life at the Broadhurst Theatre, where he does some terrific song-and-dance numbers and engages everyone in the packed theatre.

Along with producer Robert Fox, Jackman is talking with Cameron Mackintosh about using one of his theatres for a series of Sunday night concerts while he’s in London filming the musical Les Miserables for Oscar-winning director Tom Hooper.

Dates and a theatre will be set once the Les Miz shooting schedule have been sorted.

Watch out for…

Hugh Dancy, who stars with Nina Arianda — a brilliant newcomer — in a play by David Ives called Venus  In Fur.

On at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, it features an actress who arrives for an audition with a bagful of tricks including a whip and a pair of black patent leather, thigh-length boots.

Dancy plays a playwright  and director, and Ms Arianda is the woman in black (dominatrix gear).

It’s completely fascinating  and the actors are excellent.  It makes you question how  and why women are treated as objects of desire in  our culture.

Dancy can also be seen soon  in the Sundance sensation Martha Marcy May Marlene.

        *****************************************************************************
Gary Oldman, who told me he will play John Le Carre’s George Smiley in a film version of Smiley’s People.

‘It’s happening some time  next year,’ the actor said  after he collected a tribute honour at the Gotham Independent Film Awards in Wall Street.

Oldman is a possible Oscar contender for his sublime portrait of Smiley in this year’s Tinker Tailor  Soldier Spy.

Smiley’s People is set several years later and the former spymaster unravels an ingenious secret.

Tomas Alfredson will direct.

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Mark Rylance will play Richard III in a production that marks his return to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.

He will perform that role in repertory with Twelfth Night in which, as I revealed in the summer, he will play Olivia — a part he first essayed several years ago.

Tim Carroll will direct Rylance in both plays at the Globe in what are known as original practice productions — meaning they will be performed and staged by an all-male ensemble as in the Bard’s day.

When we last spoke, Rylance told me he hoped to transfer the productions into the West End and then tour the U.S., working with regular collaborator Sonia Friedman — though nothing was confirmed yet. Richard III will run from July 14, and Twelfth Night from September 22.

Rylance has spent the past couple of seasons starring within the smash hit Jerusalem in London and on Broadway.

The Shakespeare’s Globe’s 2012 season begins on June 7 with Henry V, directed by Dominic Dromgoole, with Jamie Parker as the young warrior king. Rylance was the Globe’s first artistic director.

He served inside the  position for ten years until leaving in 2005.