‘King of Cool’ our anti-hero

In years gone by, cool men who were in the movies were not required to be muscle-bound.

Nobody expected that of Cary Grant or Sean Connery, and nobody got it.

The world was good.

That has sadly changed.

Steve McQueen came from those simpler times, and looked normal despite a reported two-hour fitness regime involving weightlifting and at one point, running 8km, seven days a week.

God knows what they do nowadays - it must involve steroids.

McQueen, of course, was an American actor known as ‘‘The King of Cool'', a man with a well-developed anti-hero persona in the 1960s who starred in The Thomas Crown Affair, Bullitt, The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape.

He died aged 50 in 1980, and is remembered in what is actually a reasonably good documentary on Sky's Discover Turbo channel on Thursday next week.

These shows can be cheap and awful, but I Am Steve McQueen appears to have had some time and money spent.

Robert Downey jun narrates a show that includes appearances from the likes of Pierce Brosnan, as well as McQueen's children, grandchildren and a former wife.

We discover a man born in to the Great Depression of the 1930s to alcoholic parents, who quickly ended up in a boy's home.

At 17, he joined the marines, and at 20 headed to New York to become an actor, mostly for the girls.

B-movie classic The Blob was his first major role, a film that gained cult status partly because of McQueen's involvement.

The documentary tells of his love of women and fast cars, includes plenty of discussion of his wet, glassy translucent light blue eyes, and shows how a man without steroid-injected abs can actually be cool and dangerous - to which, of course, we all aspire.

Back in the real world, Christmas is galloping drunkenly towards us, meaning something huge and alarming is going to happen on Shortland Street on TV2.

It always does this time of year, when Ferndale becomes a very risky place to act.

Last year, there was an explosion, I seem to remember, at a beach house during a party, or maybe that was the previous year, I'm not sure, but it was very exciting, and you had to wait just weeks until you found out who died, and it turned out to be nobody really important, but you didn't know that at the time.

Next Monday is this year's final - prepare yourself mentally for a mad 90-minute extravaganza.

Also on TV2 on Friday, December 18, is a show full of home video clips of children being Scared of Santa.

It is worthwhile considering how to terrify the very young before Christmas, and this show will help.

Charles Loughrey 

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