Well kids, it's Friday afternoon, and frankly, what better time than NOW to launch a new occasional feature, wherein we take a look at the forthcoming projects various celebrities have announced, which have subsequently vanished without trace, somewhere over the showbiz Bermuda Triangle.
And so to the first edition of Broken Promises, Shattered Dreams, as we examine a year 2000 interview with Dale Winton that throws up a show concept so brilliantly demented that Lost in Showbiz just HAS to believe it's still in pre-production somewhere, perhaps just stalling because of the two principals' busy schedules.
"Winton has agreed to star in a comedy about the European Parliament called My Honourable Friend," reads the turn o' the millennium Times report. "he will play a 'camp' Tory MEP who shares a Brussels flat with an old-style Labour leftie, to be portrayed the actor Jimmy Nail."
I'm actually weeping with laughter as I type this. But we go on.
"To prepare for the part Winton has watched hours of video featuring Michael Portillo and Neil Hamilton. 'I'm very nervous about it,' he reveals. 'I said to Jimmy: "But darling, I'm not an actor. I'd like to be like Ray Winstone, but the sad reality is that I'm probably much more like Julie Goodyear."'"
Was it Dale's chronic self-doubt that eventually scuppered the project? We may never know. But somewhere in all our minds, there'll be an episode of My Honourable Friend playing out for all eternity, like some lost telly Atlantis that only the true of heart may discover.
