Went to see the movie Denial last night. Had to. I’m Jewish. Its about the holocaust, or in this case, denial thereof, and its in our contract that we go see all relevant films. No choice. And it had Rachel Weiss in it, who is adorable, and Tom Wilkinson, who is brilliant and Timothy Spall who is probably the finest British character actor of his generation. Playing uber-shit-head, Hitler-lover, holocaust-denying anti-semite and all round proto-Trump racist, David Irving.

And its not just a ‘true story’ in the American movie sense in which ‘there were indeed two people in real life who had these names and one was in real life a woman, but everything else has been changed to increase viewing pleasure and happy endings’. No, this was a ‘true story’ in the sense that it was stunningly, almost obsessively, BBC-ishly (they produced it) accurate. The trial scenes were verbatim from the original trial transcript. That accurate.

And its about the trial of Deborah Lipstadt, American holocaust historian professor, who called Irving a ‘holocaust denier’ in a book, so he sued her for defamation. Even though he consorted with skinheads and other right-wing scum. He chose to defend himself (and they say the person who does that has a fool for a client) and Lipstadt had as her counsel, top QC Richard Rampton, played by Wilkinson.

Holy Shit!!!!!!!

As the name was spoken on the screen and his face appeared, I had a ‘special moment’. A flashback about 2 years. A phone call at work. “Hello, I’m the third props director’s second assistant’s under-secretary and we’re making a movie about a trial. And we’ve been interviewing the (now retired) QC and we want his glasses, because they’re ‘his thing’. Round, gold glasses. And you are his optician. Can you get us a pair?”

I immediately thought of ‘patient confidentiality’ and ‘database protection’ and the right to anonymity, of course, and said: “which credit card would you like to use?”

And I’d forgotten completely, as you do. Sold a few other pairs of specs since then. But as his name was spoken I realised that there, on the massive screen, were ‘my’ glasses. The Rampton specials. I wanted to tell everyone else in the cinema, in the whole world; I DID THOSE!! but instead just whispered it to Mel. Who said, with all due pride: ‘shhhhhh’.

The movie is ok. Rachel Weiss didn’t make her character work for me. But I never knew Deborah Lipstadt so maybe she is a strange mix of feisty-New-York-intelligensia one minute and quivering, whimpering timid thing the next. And, made by the BBC, it indeed had the feel of a tv documentary about it. Never mind, great story, they’ll remake it in Hollywood next year with guns and car chases and Terminator. Wearing my glasses.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx