Forget Wars, Disasters And The Recession - It’s The Hobbit!

Britain cast off its worries today and - for a brief, poignant moment of self-delusion - forgot that it was enmeshed in yet another war with no strategic goals, with its economy in ruins and facing worse to come in a widely-dreaded budget, while on the other side of the world Japanese engineers were risking their lives to prevent a nuclear meltdown.

Thank God you're here, Peter Jackson

“Look, everyone, we’re filming The Hobbit!” announced inflatable New Zealand director Peter Jackson as he finally got round to pointing a camera at some actors.

“Who else but the foremost multi-Oscar-winning director, producer, scriptwriter, production designer, sound editor, key grip, costume designer, model-maker, focus puller, armourer, CGI artiste, stunt pilot, cameo extra, fluffer and visionary the world has ever seen could have emerged still breathing and sane from the terrible, terrible disasters we’ve faced in the last couple of years?” he shouted modestly.

“First we had a bit of a legal kerfuffle with a Mr. Tolkien’s estate, who seemed to think they owned the rights to my gloriously-imagined vision," boasted the world's most down-to-earth mogul. "Then MGM’s little cashflow blip left dear little Guillermo del Toro in tears, so I had to step in. After that, would you believe the actors actually wanted paying for the privilege of appearing in the greatest story ever told? To top it all, right at the very last minute poor old yours truly had an unscheduled spot of bother with the old guts! I hadn’t seen such a stinking torrent of shit since Meet The Feebles! But hello world! Here I am again!”

“These industrial estates are like rabbit warrens,” he mused aloud to the solitary freelance reporter who turned up at his studio to cover the most momentous day in the history of cinema for local free paper, the Wellingtonian. “I daresay all the world’s top journos must have got lost trying to find us.”

Meanwhile, war movie aficionados were delighted to hear that Jackson protégé Christian Rivers has just filmed his 1,000th frame of the long-awaited Dambusters remake.