A rum story

Rotten will be pumped up like a proselytising pastor on Pervitin following news that Johnny Depp is to reprise his role as Raoul Duke (yes, I can bandy his name around now that I’ve been cured of my ignorance) in a cinematic adaptation of HST’s autobiographical The Rum Diaries. Given the fashion these days of filming in Prague, perhaps there’s a chance of a bit role, although I guess it might be hard to dress up the city of a thousand spires to look like Costa Rica circa 1959. Depp himself is not a stranger to the city, having filmed From Hell there a few years ago. My Maori neighbour has a picture of himself and Depp from Prague when he worked a few days as the boom handler (is that what they call it?) on that film during a professional softball gig in CZ. He used to play for the New Zealand Black Sox national softball team – my neighbour that is, not Depp – which has won the World Championships five times running, so the players are in hot demand around the world. He knocked up his Czech girlfriend while over there, and that’s why we sometimes have Maori-Czech seven-year-old twins to look after.