The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 25

THE GUARDIAN Saturday November 30 1991 ARTS, PERSONAL 25 Michael Billington on Alan Bennett's deranged and despairing George III The mad monarch Artist who boxed clever Hugh Hebert ALAN Bennett's new play at the Lyttelton, The Madness Of George in, is about what its title suggests. It offers no hidden agenda or coded thesis and, unlike Nick Dear's Georgian monologue In The Ruins, it waves no republican banner. It is basically a highly intelligent history-play about the sad, dubiously mad Hanoverian Lear. If I have any reservation, it is that it lacks the resonance of metaphor. Goethe once said that a play should be symbolic: each bit of the action must be significant in itself and point to something still more important behind it Mr Bennett makes any number of astute points about the assertive ignorance of doctors, the inbred opportunism of politicians and the relativity of definitions of madness.

But he never achieves the universality that is the prerequisite of great drama. What Mr Bennett does do is to touch our hearts and tickle our intellects. He sets the action in 1788-89 by which time George had been enthroned for 28 years, conceived 15 children and contrived to lose.the American colonies. The mere mention of the last sends the monarch into a shuddering rage; but when regal nonconformities acquire the symptoms of madness, including the unstoppable flow of streams of consciousness, the vultures start to gather. With needle-point skill, Mr Bennett shows how everyone has a vested interest in the king's condition.

Pitt, the beleaguered Prime Minister, needs to preserve the image of the king's sanity since he governs by the monarch's consent The debt-ridden, dissipated Prince of Wales, aided by the power-hungry Charles James Fox, equally needs to establish George's madness to be proclaimed Regent. Meanwhile the doctors, jealous of their own status, quarrel amongst themselves like Moliere quacks, variously diagnosing flying gout, creeping palsy and galloping constipation. Mr Bennett unravels the political intricacies of the period with Stracheyesque wit. But at the heart of the play lie scenes of horrific pathos showing the curative techniques of Francis Willis who ran a private Lincolnshire madhouse. Willis's method was total mastery of the patient; and to that end we see the king strapped in a restraining chair, bound in a straitjacket and even gagged to silence his scatological ram-blings.

But, instead of scoring easy points off Willis's stick-and-carrot methods, Bennett shows how his puritan domination achieved a temporary restoration of the king's stability. Hanover cure Nigel Hawthorne as George HI 'one of the richest roles in post-war drama' photograph: auanoa abegq naked female doll in what seems like a miniature rough stone coffin, with a red ribbon round her waist; or a smoke-dark shrine to Lauren Bacall. Tony Curtis read from Cornell's journals: "Perhaps a definition of a box could be as a kind of forgotten game, a philosophical toy of the Victorian era, with poetic or magical moving parts." That suggests Cornell had a very true idea of what he was doing, and what it was worth. These are in every sense collector's pieces. Sontag says he was a great artist, and if you include the generous spirit in which he made boxes as well as the boxes he made, let's settle for that AS the bank manager said, "They're the ones that look like a coat hanger with a rib-cage, aren't they?" He didn't mention the four legs, which was lucky because the canine star of Tony Grounds's Gone To The Dogs (Central) only has three, the fourth having been eaten by a milk float Emerging from prison, Jim (Jim Broadbent) eyed his one-time gleam of a greyhound winner with mournful appraisal: "I was dreamin' of racin' that tripod." Failing that of raising a litter of cup-winning coat-hangers.

Television drama has already ransacked most sports, as in Trainer, the clodhopping tale of horsey folk. Now we have the sport of Essex man and five million punters, and Waltham-stow Stadium promises more entertainment than Ascot Warren Clarke, having finished with football in The Manageress, is playing another millionaire sport-mad slob, Larry. He is married to Laurie (Alison Steadman), an old flame of Jim's, which is why it is billed as a romantic comedy. Larry keeps Laurie in a de at the door of greatness without quite gaining admission, it is because it lacks the single controlling idea that elevates a case-history into myth. Mr Bennett, however, forces you to judge him by the highest standards.

He has also created in the "mad" king, (later found to be suffering from porphyria, a disorder of the metabolism), one of the richest roles in postwar drama superlatively played by Nigel Hawthorne. We knew Mr Hawthorne to be a deft comedian but he here gives us the king's tyrannical humours, surreal babblings, unconscious desires and helpless Hi was visited by Andy Warhol, Tony Curtis, Susan Sontag. and other luminaries of the New York art establishment so count him out as an undiscovered genius. Joseph Cornell, the subject of Robert McNab's entrancing Worlds In A Box (Omnibus, BBCl), seems on the contrary to have turned the most valuable trick in the art trade: to become a source of wonder to the leaders of the cultural pack without having the media jackals going through your garbage. Cornell's art was to make glass-fronted boxes containing all manner of found objects: press clippings, marbles, feathers, small dolls, old clock springs, a heap of red powder like the Dragon's Blood block-makers used in the days of hot metal.

Some are subdivided, pigeon holes within boxes. Some have areas masked off, so a ball rolling down a zig-zag cascade only appears intermittently on its way. One sold recently for $500,000. Cornell died in 1972, aged 69. He admired Max Ernst, must have known about Kurt Schwitters, both practitioners of surrealistic collage.

He lived in the city all his life, in his mother's house on Utopia Parkway, with his brother Robert, the victim of cerebral palsy. McNab turns the night-time windows of the house, seen from outside, into his own boxes, with some of Cornell's odd films projected on the blinds. Cornell made his boxes to please and entertain Robert, and this is what is most moving about them. His first was made from the round lid of his mother's powder box in which he stuck pins; and on each pin head he hung a silver thimble. Held up to his brother's eye, and to ours, they wobble and shimmer.

James Rosenquist, one of his artist friends, said it was like a thimble forest A clockspring often appears, almost wholly uncoiled, steel made as delicate and trembling as a moth antenna. Everything Cornell made was for a child mind, and was child-" like, including sometimes its unconscious sexuality: a small Covent Garden Mary Clarke Royal Ballet THE funny old programme which the Royal Ballet has come up with (two party pieces replacing Jerome Robbins's Afternoon Of A Faun) provides some fine performances and some very bizarre elements. The dancing of Darcey Bus-sell and Irek Mukhamedov as Masha and Vershinin in Mac-Millan's Three Sisters-inspired ballet, Winter Dreams, is now so secure, so passionate and so beautiful it makes the evening worthwhile. The ballet itself has some bad moments notably, the entirely expendable -drunk dance for DerekRencher as an army doctor but the love duet and the renunciation Leicester Robin Thornber The Little Prince ANTOINB de Saint-Bxupery's whimsical allegory of a pilot who meets an engaging young traveller from another planet after crash-landing in the desert seems to me one of those children's classics that are actually more appreciated by their adult readers. But Anthony Clark's adaptation for the stage allows for a fine display of theatrical ingenuity in making the fantasy concrete and this production, directed by Julia Bardsley at Yesterday's weather Obituary: Anton Furst Through the action Bennett raises all kinds of fascinating ideas: the kinship betwen monarchy and lunacy, the therapeutic value of art as George discovers an image of his predicament in King Lear, the connection between lies, tricks and scams and constitutional stability.

Bennett also preserves a miraculous hairline balance between tragedy and comedy: he makes the king's plight profoundly moving while nonchalantly throwing off Wildean lines like "The asylums of this country are full of the sound of mind disinherited by the out of pocket." But if the play knocks in body tights, she manoeuvres her limbs into extraordinary contortions. It is done to music by Bach, and it brought the house down. Much as I dislike La Luna, it can remain a Guillem speciality. But to cast her in Balan-chine's Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux was disastrous. This glorious divertissement demands a compact dancer to give precise definition to the quick, small steps of the choreography.

Guillem is simply too tall and loose and did not help herself by wearing a frock which hid steps that should be brilliantly visible. The good news is that in Adam Cooper the Royal have found a young dancer who can partner La Guillem and who can honourably follow the generations of great dancers who Have i shone uTfhis piece. His future augurs well. Covent Garden on Monday. Joker's wild Jack Nicholson Michael Tippett, who was sufficiently impressed to recommend him to Covent Garden Opera, as someone ideally equipped to realise the psychedelic tendencies of Tippett's opera The Ice Break.

Anton had already proved his worth to me personally when he did the designs for a music theatre performance by my group, The Electric Candle, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in 1970. The production budget was 50, but Anton contrived through the use of carefully integrated film, slide projections and lighting to give the impression that it cost thousands. His sense of discipline, flair and precision were no less evident when he had budgets for 5 mil Around the world (Lunch-time reports) Gothic builder of Gotham City as the king's bumbling physician, from Charles Kay as the steely Lincolnshire specialist and from Cyril Shaps as a medical obsessive who. leaves no stool unturned. Julian Wadham also endows the young Pitt with just the right mix of moral rectitude and ruthless ambition.

It is, in every sense, a big experience: an engrossing exploration of Byzantine Georgian politics and the insulated despair of derangement Posterity will judge whether the play makes history but it certainly records it with Bennett's unique intuitive flair. umph of illusion for the production team. Like Alice, it's an innocent child's-eye-view of the oddities of adult behaviour the ruler, the drunkard, the greedy businessman, the academic, all obsessed by "matters of consequence" with its simple charms enhanced by Mark Vibrans's memorable music. But what makes this production so captivating is the beautifully detailed realisation of an unfettered vision. It held the first-afternoon audience of seven-year-olds upwards enthralled.

And I still think that adults will find a few coded messages, too. The Little Prince is at Leicester Ray market, box office 0533 539797, until January 11. Birthdays Today: Ivor Buhner-Thomas, chairman, Ancient Monuments Society, former Labour and Conservative MP, 86; Diana Cotton, QC, a Recorder of the Crown Court, 50; Richard Crenna, actor, 65; Robert Guillaume, singer, actor, 61; David Lightbown, MP, 59; Radu Lupu, concert pianist, 46; Patrick McLoughlin, MP, Minister for Shipping and Public Transport, 34; Marguerite Porter, ballet dancer, 43; Max Reinhardt, publisher, 76; Stan Sulzmann, saxophonist, 43; Efrem Zimbalist Jr, actor, 68. Tomorrow: Woody Allen, actor, writer, director, 56; Gordon Crosse, composer, 54; Mike Denness, cricketer, 51; Dame Alicia Markova, prima ballerina, 81; Keith Michell, actor, 63; Bette Midler, comedienne, 46; Gilbert O'Sullivan, singer, 45; Stephen Poliakoff, playwright 39; Richard Pryor, actor, 51; Sarfraz Nawaz, cricketer, 43; Charlene Tilton, actress, 32; Lee Trevino, golfer, 52; Prof Michael Williams, nuclear engineer, 56. Another Pay Milan, November 30, 1771, to his mother and sisters: Lest you should think that I am unwell I am sending you these few lines.

I kiss Mamma's hand. My greetings to all our good friends. I have seen four rascals hanged here in the Piazza del Duomo. They hang them just as they do in Lyons Wolfgang. Letters Of Mozart And His Family, edited by Emily Anderson (Macmil-lan, paperback, 1989) Death Arthur Davis, who has died aged 93 in Welkom, Orange Free State, may have been the last survivor of the world's first concentration camp a British device set up at Port Elizabeth during the Boer War in 1901, under Kitchener's policy of burning Afrikaner farms to frustrate guerrilla tactics.

Davis's grandfather was an Englishman but his mother and her young children were not spared incarceration. She was accorded "first class" status but this did not prevent her other son from being one of 28,000 Boers to succumb in the camps, chiefly due to malnutrition and inadequate sanitation an unfortunate consequence of a policy that, in Kitchener's words, would protect the women from being "molested by Davis nevertheless went on to married an Englishwoman, celebrated his diamond wedding, and bore no grudge. vulnerability. But the genius of the performance lies in the suggestion that under the status-conscious monarch who enjoys stately Handelian entrances lies a prosaic, domesticated man who likes nothing better than to curl up with "Mrs King." The play is also beautifully served by Nicholas Hytner's production which combines classical clarity with filmic speed as scene melts into scene with the aid of Mark Thompson's Brechtian traverse curtains. In a large cast there are also rich, Gillrayesque performances from Harold Innocent the Leicester Haymarket, realises this potential to the full.

It's a truly magical mystery trip through space. Starting with a simple direct address to the audience by the pilot (Haydn Ford), luring the kids in by explaining with his crayons how he really wanted to be an artist, it opens into a world of unlimited imaginative horizons as the Little Prince (Jo Castle-ton) recounts his encounters with the inhabitants of one-man asteroids in a quirky cosmos. All this is dazzingly realised in the visual feast of Julian Crouch's design: a parachute-silk Sahara that becomes a snake and a skyfull of latex asteroids each with its own personality. The Little Prince's selPprdpelled planet, with its volcanos and flowering rose, is a mesmerising bi ments full of wondrous mechanical contrivances, but he seemed almost to have a reference point in some art-historical movement for his most innovatory design ideas. By temperament an anarchist with a fierce loyalty to those he admired, Anton was riotous, reckless, exhilarating.

Encased in leather, he drove a succession of motor cycles and historic cars at reckless speeds and loved his all too short existence on a knife edge. Any offence he gave was far outweighed by his charm and humour; he was unique and irreplaceable; Anthony Francis 'Anton' Furst, born May 6, 1944; died November 24, 1991 role on screen two years later. Both Senary and Bellamy, staunch Democrats, made sure that the film, which told of Roosevelt's struggle against polio, his entry into politics and his endorsement of the Catholic Al Smith for the presidency, was released at the time of the Kennedy-Nixon race for the White House. In his last years, his now craggy face became known to younger audiences in Trading Places (1983), in which he and his near-contemporary, Don Ameche, appeared as a pair of mean multi-millionaires; also in Pretty Woman (1990) as a wealthy businessman. But he will be most affectionately remembered for the "Ralph Bellamy role," of which he himself once said: "It is not a bad career, being the guy the leading lady turns down." Ronald Bergan Ralph Bellamy; born June 17, 1904; died November 29, 1991 Accio 16 61 'Los Angeles 17 63 Algiers 17 63 Luxembourg Fg 2 36 Amsterdam 8 46 Madrid 9 48 Alliens 12 54 Majorca 17 63 Bahrain 23 73 Malaga 15 59 Barbados 27 81 Malta 19 66 Barcelona 14 57 Manchester 10 50 Beirut 15 59 Melbourne 15 59 Belgrade 6 43 'Miami 27 81 Berlin Fg 1 34 'Montreal 5 41 'Bermuda 21 70 Moscow 3 37 Biarritz 10 50 Munich 2 36 Birmingham 9 48 Nairobi 24 75 Bombay 29 84 Naples 15 59 Bordeaux 11 52 'Nassau 27 81 'Boston 10 50 New Delhi 26 79 Bristol 10 50 Newcastle 10 SO Brussels.

9 48 'New York 8 46 Budapest 5 41 Nice 16 61 6 Aires 29 84 Oporto 14 57 Cairo 19 66 Oslo 2 36 Cape Town 22 72 Paris Fg 3 37 Cardilf 10 50 Peking 8 46 Casablanca 20 68 Perth (Aus) 24 75 'Chicago 3 37 Prague Fg 2 36 Cologne 41 Reykjavik 1 34 Copenhagen 7 45 Rhodes 17 63 Corfu 17 63 'Rio Oe Jan 23 73 'Dallas 23 73 Riyadh 27 81 Dublin 11 52 Rome 13 55 Edinburgh 11 52 Salzburg 2 36 Faro 17 63 Seoul 11 52 Florence Fg 4 39 Singapore 29 84 Frankfurt 3 37 Stockholm 6 43 Funchal 19 66 Strasbourg Fg 1 34 Geneva 4 39 Sydney 27 81 Gibraltar 15 59 Tangier 14 57 Glasgow 12 54 Tel Aviv Th 15 59 Helsinki 7 45 Tenerile 20 68 Innsbruck 6 43 Tokyo 18 64 Inverness 9 48 Tunis 19 66 Istanbul 6 43 Valencia 14 57 Jersey 9 48 'Vancouver 7 45 Jo'burg 28 82 Venice 8 46 Lamaca IB 64 Vienna 4 39 LasPalmaa 20 68 Warsaw 4 39 Lisbon 12 54 'Washington 12 54 Locarno 9 48 Wellington 11 52 London 12 54 Zurich 1 34 tached Trap 1 with indoor pool, acres of mock marble, and pala tial kennels; but she still pines for Dford. Emptying the pet piranha into the pool, she joins Jim's conspiracy secretly to mate the tripod Highland Fling with her husband's fleet Dog 'o'War normal stud fee 1,000. Which they hope will produce a bookie-beating champion. Harry Enfield, looking well scrubbed for his drama debut is Jim's son, and the -second bora loser of the family. Or the third if you count Highland Fling.

Around Britain Report for the 24 hours ended 6 pm yesterday Sun- Temp shine. Rain Weather hrs in (day) HQ LAND Aspatrla Birmingham Bristol Buxton Leeds London Manchester Newcastle Norwich Nottingham Plymouth Ross-on-Wye AST COAST Tynemouth Scarborough Skegness Hunstanton Cromer Lowestoft Clacton Southend Margato Heme Bay SOUTH COAST Folkestone Hastings Eastbourne Brighton Worthing Littlehampton Bognor Regis Southsea Sandown Shanklln Venlnor Bournemouth Poole Swanage Weymouth Exmouth Telgnmouth Torquay Salcombo Falmouth Penzance Isles of Scllly Jersey Guernsey WEST COAST St. Ives Newquay Saunton Sands llfracombe Mlnehead Weslon-s-Mare Southport Morecambe Douglas WALES Anglesey 0.4 0.05 5 11 Cloudy 9 9 Cloudy 10 11 Dull 0.01 7 8 Dull IT 9 11 Bright 4.4 10 13 Sunny pm 9 10 Cloudy 0.9 0.08 7 11 Dull 0.6 8 10 Cloudy 9 9 Dull 10 11 Dull 11 11 Dull OA 0.10 7 11 Rain am 7 9 Dull 8 11 Cloudy 8 11 Bright pm 9 9 Bright pm 8 9 Cloudy 9 10 Sunny pm 9 11 Sunny am 9 11 Bright pm 1.2 1.2 2.9 1.5 0.1 4.2 4.6 4.9 5.1 3.2 3.4 2.6 4.1 9 9 Bright pm 10 11 Cloudy 9 11 Bright 9 11 Bright pm. 10 12 Bright 9 12 Sunny pm 9 11 Bright 10 12 Sunny pm 9 12 Sunny pm 9 11 Blight pm 9 13 Sunny pm 10 12 Cloudy 9 11 Cloudy 10 10 Cloudy 10 10 Cloudy 10 11 Cloudy 10 12 Cloudy 10 11 Cloudy 10 12 Dull 9 12 Dull 0.1 2.3 7 10 Cloudy 8 11 Cloudy 10 13 Cloudy 10 11 Cloudy 10 11 Dull 0.1 10 11 Cloudy 10 11 Dull 3.5 9 14 Bright 0.03 7 11 Dull 0.26 6 10 Cloudy 0.03 9 11 Drzleam 1.1 9 13 Bright 10 11 Cloudy uaroiti Colwyn Bay Tenby SCOTLAND Aberdeen Avlemore Edinburgh Eskdalemuir Glasgow Klnloss Lerwick Leuchars Prestwlck Stornoway Tlree Wick 0.01 2 10 Rain 0.6 0.01 1 11 Cloudy 1.0 0.09 3 12 Bright 0.1 0.31 1.3 0.02 0.13 0.8 0.07 0.3 0.10 0.23 0.30 0.01 3 12 Ratn am 4 13 Cloudy 4 9 Rain pm 2 11 Rain am 5 11 Cloudy 5 12 Rain 6 11 Rain 4 11 Rain NORTH CRN IRELAND Belfast 0.1 0.09 11 Cloudy Reading not available. High tides duet for these two, and Anthony Dowell's remarkable, stricken performance as Masha's husband, show Mac-Millan choreography at its expressive, emotional best The opening Les Sylphides, so gloomily under-lit in this production, was redeemed by Fiona Chadwick and Robert Hill as the principal couple.

Ashton's Thais Pas de Deux, made so expressly for Sibley and Dowell, has been restored by them to the repertory and was sweetly done by Karen Paisey and Michael Nunn on Thursday. But it will always be haunted by the ghosts of its creators and it suffered badly by being sandwiched between two Sylvie Guillem indulgences. Her solo La Luna, choreographed by Maurice Bejart, uses her gymnastic excesses to hideous effect Clad returned home to Britain. He found Hollywood a difficult place to work in for he was no man to compromise, as his films showed. But television-scale film virtually ceased after Batman and there was little incentive for him to remain in his home country.

Derek Malcolm Meirion Bowen writes: Anton Furst had an exceptional, challenging artistic talent which he exercised to a high level despite a frail physical constitution. A tar accident in his mid-teens left him immobilised in hospital for over a year and he never fully recovered. Nevertheless, as a designer, he exulted in tackling the impossible and from the time of his involvement in the Stanley Kubrick film, 2001, he was always on call as a special effects man. At the time I first met him, in the mid-sixties, when he lived next door, he had been working with Denis Gabor on the implications of holography for film and theatre. A few years later, he was able to mount an important exhibition at the Royal Academy, entitled Light Fantastic, which revealed to the public the potential uses of holography and lasers, not only for the arts, but for medicine and space research.

I introduced him then to Sir was Cary Grant, the witty, anarchic and sophisticated city slicker, showing up and teasing the poor lumbering provincial sap. There are few greater delights in screwball comedy than watching Bellamy's stupid, handsome face and puzzled blue eyes unable to comprehend Grant's caddishness and the collapse of order around him. As the Oklahoma baron and momma's boy in The Awful Truth (1937), he doesn't realise how off-key is his rendering of Home On The Range, even when Grant takes off his bathroom baritone. He is also unaware that Grant, doing his utmost to win back his ex-wife (Irene Dunne), is tickling her from behind a door as the markets his brand of toxic toiletries in Anton Furst's Batman ANTON Furst, the Oscar-winning designer of Tim Burton's Batman, was one of the most innovatory and imaginative production designers Britain has produced. His vision of Gotham City was one of the best things about the film, and his suicide has tragically cut short a career that was at its peak.

He had gone to Hollywood in April 1990 at the request of Jon Peters and Peter Guber, makers of Batman and then heads of Columbia-Tristar, to redesign the entire complex of the famous studio. But it was then taken over by the Japanese and the commission fell through. Instead, he did the production design for Penny Marshall's Oscar-nominated Awakenings, worked on the new Michael Jackson video and also designed Hollywood, a fashionable New York restaurant where the customers eyed each other and ate as an afterthought. Among the films that benefited greatly from his particular eye were Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket, Lady Chatterley's Lover, The Frog Prince and two films of Neil Jordan's The Company Of Wolves and High Spirits. Furst was a highly strung and emotional man and his wife, Penny, had recently Ralph Bellamy The leading ladies' reject man lion.

He had an intense appreciation of visual composition and of the dramatic power of music: by contrast, he was out of his depth when words (especially poetry) were in the foreground of a presentation. At the Royal College of Art, he belonged to the same generation as David Hockney, was close to the then principal Sir Hugh Casson, and numbered amongst his intimate friends the film director Lutz Becker: there he also designed the production of Jarry's Ubu Roi (himself taking the role of Mere Ubu) and developed generally an acute sense of design history nurtured by subsequent studies in Berlin, Paris and Prague. Thus not only were his apart Ralph Bellamy's long career in over 100 films, shows that he did get the girl more often than not, even Fay Wray, which is more than King Kong ever did. Besides playing an action hero and heavy in a number of cheapies, he starred as Ellery Queen, in the first four of Columbia's B-picture detective series from 1940-41. From the mid-1940s, he worked primarily on stage, giving outstanding portrayals on Broadway in State Of The Union and Detective Story, and 857 performances as Franklin D.

Roosevelt in Dore Schary's worthy Sunrise At Campobello (1958), for which he won a Tony award. Bellamy, who resembled FDR in voice and looks, repeated the C. cloudy. Dr. drtale; (air; Fg.

log-. hail: rain; SI, sleet: Sn, snow; sunny; Th, thunder. (Previous day's readings) Sun and moon To SUN RISES- 0741 1556 1255 0116 SUN SETS- MOON SETS- MOON RISES- MOON: New Dec 6th SUN RISES- 0743 1555 0233 1313 SUN SETS- MOON RISES- MOON SETS- MOON: New Dec 6th Lighting-tip Today Belfast Birmingham 1604 1559 1606 1550 1556 1555 1545 1555 1603 1557 1605 1549 1555 1554 1544 1554 to 0822 to 0755 10 0753 10 0822 to 0743 10 0801 to 0807 10 0754 10 0823 10 0758 10 0754 10 0824 lo 0744 to 0802 10 0808 10 0755 Glasgow London Manchester- orrsKN- Newcastle Nottingham-Tomorrow Belfast- Birming ham-Bristol Glasgow Lonoon- Manchester-Newcastle Nottingham HTlaJor roadworks Lor don and South Bast kUi 1 lane only both ways, overnight JS-9 Mil Contratlow J5. M80: Contraflow J5-8. Lane closures J10-11.

Lane closures both ways Westway, While Cltv. McKanda and last Angft Mil Contraflow J21-22. Mi Contratlow J7-9. Northbound entry slip road closed J7. hWt Contraflow J13-14.

MBi Southbound entry and exit slip roads closed J6. Diversions. MSOi Contraflow J3. waiM and Wast MBi 1 ane closed southbound J27-28. MB Conlrallow J24-25.

M4i Restrictions both ways J39-41 M4i Various lane closures both ways J22-28. MBi Contratlow J11-12. Conlrallow J19 (M32). North MMi Restrictions on airport link road. Conlrallow J9-11.

MSBi Reduced lo one lane both wavs J3-4. aMSt Eastbound carriage way closed from November 29 to December 2 10-12. hW2i Contraflow J34-35. M8i Conlrallow J40-42. MIS) Contraflow nr J2.

M18i Contraflow J4-5. Mil Lane closures both ways J3S-35a. Contraflow J42-43, northbound entry slip J41 closed. Scotland M74i Various lane closures at J6. MBi Lane closures both ways J13-I4.

Outside lane closed westbound J29. Road Information compiled and supplied by AA RoaUwateh. day Tomorrow WHEN critics used the shorthand expression to describe an actor "in the Ralph Bellamy role," film-goers knew exactly what was meant. It conjured up a dependable, pipe-smoking, humourless, innately dull character, believing in the old-fashioned virtues of home, mom and apple pie, destined to be jilted in the end by the spirited heroine for a more exciting beau. Ralph Bellamy, who died last night at the age of 87, played this solid citizen with dead-pan comic perfection, while still making him into a rather touching figure.

After all, there were no final romantic cliches for him; it was a matter of "boy meets girl, boy loses girl." His antithesis and nemesis stuffed-shirt swain reads one of his ineffable love poems. The drawling Bellamy was the perfect foil for the fast-talking Grant again in His Girl Friday (1940), in which editor Grant does everything he can to stop his top reporter Rosalind Russell from going off to marry the stuffy insurance man patiently waiting around for her. In Carefree (1938) Ginger Rogers goes to see her psychiatrist (Fred Astaire) because she's broken her engagement to the luckless Bellamy three times, subconsciously knowing she would be suffocated with boredom in a marriage to him. Naturally, she falls for Fred, who literally dances rings around this rival. However, close scrutiny of Today London Bridge 0805 6.3 2051 6.4 Dover 0532 5.8 1822 5.6 Liverpool 0550 7.9 1615 8.2 Avonmouth 0121 10.9 1352 11.1 Hull 0008 6.6 1327 6.2 Greenock 0706 3.2 1852 3.5 Leittl 0926 4.9 2153 5.0 DunLaoghaire 0635 3.6 1855 3.9 Tomorrow London Bridge 0915 6.3 2203 6.5 Dovor 0645 5.8 1928 5.7 Liverpool 0700 8.0 1924 6.3 Avonmouth 0233 10.9 1504 11.2 Hull 0130 6.5 1436 6.4 Greenock 0820 32 2008 3.4 Lellh 1033 5.0 2303 5.1 DunLaoghaire 0743 3.7 2000 3.9 Weather Forecast, page 28.