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Oh dear.
Those elusive subterranean appendages, Irish roots.
Never mind, John is to play Quentin Crisp once again, 34 years after he first portrayed him in The Naked Civil Servant.
John Hurt will be happy to know that he was responsible for provoking probably the best version of that tedious joke about a Jew in Belfast (“Yes, but are you a Protestant Jew or a Catholic Jew?”)
Rather incongruously Mr Crisp, an atheist, found himself in Belfast debating the existence of God. At the end of his speech a woman stood up and asked him: “Mr Crisp — is the God which you don’t believe in — well, is he a Protestant God or a Catholic God?”
The last time I saw John Hurt was in Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape in Dublin. I was in time to meet up with my old friend after the performance and he was well satisfied with his part.
We talked, we laughed, we shared (as we artistic people do) and John confided in me that he recently appeared as Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. So he was slightly worried about becoming typecast.
However, I assured him that his Krapp was wonderful and that wasn’t just my opinion.
A star-studded audience lapped it all up — Peter Bowles, Chris de Burgh, Eddie Jordan — and I even saw Bono discussing Krapp with Louis Walsh.
There has to be a joke in there somewhere, but I’m just too busy so you’ll have to do it yourself.