POSH: VERY MUCH A LINTON TRAVEL TAVERN ACTRESS

That Armando Iannucci walked backwards from the Alan Partridge movie proposal with a fixed smile saying "Good luck, but I really have to buy some jaffa cakes or something or other" should have been enough of a warning that this might be a stretch too far for the concept. But if that was the point where we detected a funny smell, the news that Victoria Beckham has been signed up for her first major screen role since Spiceworld is where you notice that the room is full of flies and whatever it is under that blanket seems to be moving, as if a thousand maggots were feasting on a corpse. There's a source which, since it sounds so positive, is either Victoria herself, or maybe Lynne:

"The scripts for Partridge are obviously under wraps and writing is still in progress, but Victoria's part is pretty much done and dusted.

"She'll be the interviewee that finally allows Alan back on the airwaves with an incendiary chat and her part calls for some serious comic timing. She'll add glamour to the project and prove she's able to take the piss with the rest of them, it's a brilliant move for her."

"Adding glamour" to Alan Partridge - someone's sort of missed the point, haven't they?

We're not sure why being on Partridge will prove any more conclusively that she can take the piss out of herself, either - indeed, much of Beckham's frankly fruitless career parabola of the last few years has seemed to involve her trying to make us like her by showing she can laugh at herself (in carefully pre-arranged chunks): the Ali G interview; the crisp adverts; the video for the comeback single which guyed her supposed media image. Victoria: it's not going to work, love; you'll need to find another way to make us warm to you. In fact, when being at the centre of a kidnap attack leaves the country still incapable of feeling any sympathy towards you, you might need to think very, very hard indeed for a new idea.

music movies alan partridge steve coogan victoria beckham