Telly Visions: Romola Garai

Romola Garai seems to be popping up/out all over the place on television just recently! She’s been acting professionally since 2000 when she made her debut in The Last Of The Blonde Bombshells. The actress is perhaps best known now for playing the title role in Jane Austen’s Emma, a four-part adaptation broadcast two years ago on BBC One, opposite Michael Gambon playing her father Mr. Woodhouse. The cast also included Jodhi May and Christina Cole.

But Romola has most recently been seen on BBC Two playing Sugar, a young and intelligent prostitute seeking revenge, through a novel she is writing, against all the men who have abused her and her colleagues, in The Crimson Petal And The White. She has commented on her racy part of Sugar, a 19th century mistress, that “standing around in knickers and suspenders, waiting for someone to call action, is pretty cringe-making... By the end everyone on the set was like, ‘Please just put it away.’”

This week Romola is back on our screens in the six-part television drama series The Hour. Set in the BBC newsrooms of the mid-Fifties, and again on BBC Two, she plays Bel Rowley, spirited and ambitious, and facing the most exciting and daunting challenge of her life – running The Hour. Can her passion for the truth survive the political pressure the job will bring – and will her friendship with Freddie survive her undeniable attraction to front man Hector?

Undercover, Underwired Underwear!

The latest series of ‘Undercover Boss’ began on Tuesday, 5th July at 9pm on Channel 4 with a look at adult retailer Ann Summers. CEO Jacqueline Gold is one of Britain’s best known business women. She has developed the family industry away from the domain of the male “raincoat brigade” to a taboo-busting female-friendly high street staple. Too famous to go incognito herself, Jacqueline sent younger sister and Deputy MD Vanessa (pictured) undercover, in amongst the undies, to one of their high-street stores. But little sister Vanessa struggled with some customers’ intimate questions about the products!

You can just imagine it… Browsing in one of the stores, a potential male customer picks up a vibrator, ostensibly for his girlfriend or wife, although one wonders why she’d need it if he was keeping her satisfied, and asks the young attractive female shop assistant if she wouldn’t mind demonstrating how to use the object, on the pretence he’s not exactly familiar with its purpose! Or, maybe he’s not sure how a pair of crotchless panties would suit the love of his life and asks the girl behind the counter if she wouldn’t mind modelling them for him while he sets up his digital camera!! Anyway, you get the picture… I’m glad I don’t work at Ann Summers and have to fend off such questions on a regular basis, although maybe you get used to it.

One thing I’ve often found amusing, in the city in which I live, is that Ann Summers is situated next door to Primark! So the most expensive place to get your knickers is a stone’s throw from the cheapest!!