SG's Mr Joshi says it is signs of business investment that will drive the market higher, which will only come after a clear upswing in consumer spending. "There has to be a certain sequence of events, starting with an increase in consumption," he says."It's quite possible that the FTSE 100 could slip back to 5,700 on bad corporate news from the US," says Deutsche's Mr McBain. Mr Russell warns of a larger threat to equity returns, if the macroeconomic environment becomes characterised by a combination of low GDP growth and low inflation.. Predatory, sexy, dangerous, serene, icy... the adjectives, invariably chosen by middle-aged, male journalists quite possibly frothing at the mouth tumble from the bundle of newspaper cuttings I read through on my way to meet Lindsay Duncan Predatory, sexy, dangerous, serene, icy...
the adjectives, invariably chosen by middle-aged, male journalists quite possibly frothing at the mouth tumble from the bundle of newspaper cuttings I read through on my way to meet Lindsay Duncan. There was a further example in Tuesday's Daily Mail. In a review of Mouth to Mouth the play by Kevin Elyot that has just transferred to the West End after a sell-out run at the Royal Court Duncan was described as "an ice queen". She was unforgettably ice-queenly, too, in arguably her two greatest roles on stage and screen, as the Marquise de Merteuil in Christopher Hampton's Les Liaisons Dangereuses, and as Barbara Douglas in Alan Bleasdale's GBH. Then there's elegant, mysterious Alice in Perfect Strangers, the Stephen Poliakoff drama currently unfolding on BBC2 Put it this way. When she is considered for a role, the process hardly ever boils down to a choice between her and Pam Ferris.But how much of the person is in the act? Will she be predatory, sexy, dangerous, serene and icy over a cappuccino in the Young Vic caf?A small part of me hopes so, and a larger part hopes not.
After all, in GBH, Robert Lindsay was reduced to a nervous wreck, zapped by her sexual charge. I know they were only acting, but even so.In the event, Duncan turns out to be not the slightest bit predatory, and not notably serene either, laughing huskily when my forgotten mobile phone trills from the bowels of my briefcase. There ensues a Keystone Kops search for the bloody thing, with papers, old sandwich wrappers, batteries, yesterday's Independent and, to my embarrassment, even a Beanie Baby emerging before I find the source of the trill Any chance to look serene myself has disintegrated. "Oh, I'm so glad somebody else has that problem with their mobile phone," says Duncan, supportively. "Nice" suddenly seems the best adjective for her.How come she is so good at playing manipulative temptresses, though? "Well, I am interested in those people, in what they do with their power And I'm not a flamboyant actress, which perhaps helps.
