Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton: If we behaved like them we'd get Asbos

Add to My Stories Forget Posh and Becks, Brad and Angelina, Bleaks and Lamps. Tell Tony and Cherie to put a cork in it, for five minutes at least. Ignore Russell and Katy, and all those other fools who rush in where angels fear to tread. For decades, everyone has known that Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were the ultimate lovers, a pair of panting turtle doves who just couldnt give each other up.
It was mad, it was bad and they were both dangerous to know, but neither could stop themselves.

Passionate: Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton fought each other with their fistsWhen they first got together in Italy during the first months of 1962, when each was still married to some other poor sucker, the ensuing scandal meant that their adulterous affair was talked about in governments. At one point, they were even condemned by the Vatican. Really. How incredibly sexy.It wouldnt happen today, of course. Celebrities break their marriage vows like Liz and Dick as they hated to be known once snapped breadsticks over illicit dinners in Roman restaurants. But back then, it had to be a secret. Reputations could be lost for less. The couple tried to be discreet, but their flamboyant natures would not allow it.

On-screen chemistry: Burton and Taylor met on the set of Cleopatra in 1963Over the years, the Burtons fought like a pair of bantams. They fell in and out of love, they had knockdown barneys, they made it up to each other with gifts of apricot-sized diamonds and passionate reunions.

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• MARTIN SAMUEL: Sorry, but Liz simply didn't light my fire
• 'They cuss her in hell today': Hate church to protest at L! iz Taylo r's funeral because of her support for gays
• EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: Female Frankenstein theatre fans disappointed with filmed performance

Lord, it must have been exhausting. No wonder their relationship, according to popular consent both then and now, was known as the love affair of the century. When it comes to the power of amour, this pair of glamorous stars were the first, the last, the everything.

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And now, with the death of Elizabeth Taylor, their relationship is back under the microscope. Its as if we have rolled back the decades to the Sixties all over again.Yet I wonder as the onslaught of memories begins was theirs really such a truly, madly, deeply world-beating affair? Surely enduring love is quiet, dogged, selfless not something chalked up in lavish quarrels and relentless, tempestuous behaviour as the world looks on, goggle-eyed.Theirs may have been an epic, enslaving and fascinating relationship but not if you lived next door to them. Not if! you wer e a friend or a member of their immediate, traumatised family. Perhaps the Burton-Taylor affair, like all messy, grand passions, is a love best looked at from the wrong end of the telescope. Their turbulent history just underlines the fact that the love lives of famous people are different from yours and mine. They operate at a more operatic pitch. If we behaved like that, wed end up in jail or with a matching set of Asbos. Instead of a Burton-Taylor love that meant regularly smacking each other around the chops over Martinis at the Polo Lounge, I like to think that true love is a remembered kindness, a cup of tea silently slipped onto the table, a lightening of the load, a smile across a room, an undimming of the flame through the grind of family, bills, illness, the march of time and life. I like to think that Elizabeth, a good woman who did so much to support Aids awareness at a time when that was a difficult thing to do, deserved a much better fate than the millefeuille of flaky husbands that fate left with her. Chief among the chumps being Burton himself, a man whose monumental talent was thrown away on booze and women. He could have been anything, but he ended up corroded by his own weaknesses.Film history tells us that when he first arrived in Los Angeles, Burton scythed through Hollywood wives, gaining a reputation as a big drinker, a determined seducer, a great raconteur, a randy party presence. A prize bore, in other words. And oddly, despite her reputation as a tremendous and eternal talent, his film star wife made only a handful of good films. Granted, there were some scorching performances among the dross. Yet perhaps the real reason why Burton and Taylor were addicted to each other was that together they were bigger than the sum of their parts. In death as in life, they continue to fascinate. Quite an encore, whichever way you look at it.

Petrol head: Quentin WilsonYes, its ti! me to ge t serious. Time to talk about the big issue of the day, the bee underneath our collective bonnet. Thats right, people. Car maintenance.
According to a new national study by the Castrol oil company, four million British motorists are so dopey they dont even know how to open the bonnet of their vehicle.
Seventeen per cent of women and six per cent of men are clueless when it comes to lifting their bonnets, never mind having a grasp of what all those oily pipes and things do under it.
Only 17 per cent of women? Im surprised that number isnt trebled. And the men? They are just lying.
The survey says that nearly three million of us have never had our cars serviced, and only one in eight checks their tyres, tops up their oil or changes bulbs themselves.
Excuse me. Cars have bulbs?
I speak as one who, after passing my test as a teenager, drove for 40 miles down a dual carriageway with the full beam on. Everyone was so friendly, I told my father later.
They all flashed their lights. Did they guess I had just passed my test? Probably, he sighed.
Meanwhile, motoring expert and TV presenter Quentin Willson says motorists should save money by learning how to do basic maintenance.
Its never going to happen, petrol head. Beep beep!

What a heel Mr Louboutin is

There is no doubt that Christian Louboutin makes beautiful shoes. His famous red-soled creations have made him a household name, a cobbler to the stars.
And Louboutin shoes make news. Only last week, Cameron aide Gabby Bertin broke one of hers while walking along Downing Street.
Not exactly brilliant publicity for the shoe company, but rather better PR than the maestro himself managed.

Ridiculous: Elle Macpherson in 650 Louboutin shoesIn an interview with New Yorker magazine, he revealed that he thinks women who wear flat shoes are losers.
I hate the whole concept of comfort! he screamed.
F! lat shoe s, he believes, are like bad relationships, in that they are only tolerated because they are comfortable.
Comfy thats one of the worst words! I just picture a woman feeling bad, with a big bottle of alcohol, really puffy, he said.
Its really depressing, but she likes her life because she has comfortable clogs.
Just a second while I clip-clop over to this gin bottle. Gulp, gulp, aah thats better. Now, where were we?
Mr Louboutin went on to describe how his footwear is not really made with women in mind in the first place.
The core of my work is dedicated not to pleasing women, but to pleasing men, he explained.
You dont say! Well, hes certainly got his wish. You see plenty of women teetering about in his shoes, looking gorgeous but uncomfortable. Are they victims of a beautifully designed form of misogyny?
Louboutin recently designed a strange cloven-hoof boot for a woman who is alone. Now Christian, that really was just a little too creepy for heres your favourite word again comfort.

No imagination: Singer Bryan AdamsCreepy rocker Bryan Adams is about to become a father for the first time his personal assistant Alicia Grimaldi is expecting their child.
What a pity the truculent statement he released confirming the pregnancy this week seemed bereft of good cheer.
Alicia Grimaldi and I are expecting a baby. She helped me start my foundation years ago, and it looks like shell be running the family now, read Adamss grudging words.
Has he no heart?
And honestly. Sleeping with his PA. Thats almost as bad as Jude Law sleeping with his childrens nanny when Sienna Miller was out of town. Have these men no imagination, not to mention loyalty?
Yet Bryans always been a little bit selfish. He has vowed never to get married, as it might interfere with his touring schedule.
Old rockers like him never die, they just drone on for ever, pleasing themselves a! s they g o. To paraphrase his big hit: everything I do, I do it for me.

A thorny question about the Nightstalker

Brought to justice...finally: Delroy Grant's reign of terror lasted decadesThe case of the Nightstalker is awful and depressing. Thank God Delroy Grant has been brought to justice, but how did he manage to evade capture for so long?
Grant should have been stopped in 1999, when his name first came up in connection with the terrible attacks on elderly women and some men in South London.
Instead, a series of police errors meant he claimed at least 146 more victims, including at least three who were raped and 20 more who were sexually assaulted.
Of course, mistakes are made in complicated investigations. However, these were shocking blunders a cavalcade of basic mistakes and a lack of proper care. This led directly to a number of defenceless old people suffering harrowing assaults at the hands of this vicious sexual psychopath.
Commander Simon Foy, head of the Mets homicide and serious crime command, has apologised to Grants victims for failing to stop him a dozen years ago.
He said: We are deeply sorry for the trauma suffered by all those victims and our failure to bring Grant to justice earlier.
Two things. Sometimes, as in this case, simply saying sorry is not good enough. Not by a long margin. The apology may be well meant, but it will bring scant comfort to these traumatised elderly victims or to their families.
And secondly, I do wonder if, had the Nightstalkers victims been young women or children instead of pensioners, better efforts by the police and more of a public outcry would have put him behind bars years earlier.

We are a nation who cant poach an egg we need a gadget for this task.
New from Lakeland is the Poachet, a device made of teabag-type paper.
The Poachet contains the egg, but still allows contact with water.
You see, yo! u put th e pouch in a cup, crack the egg into it, lift out the Poachet, put it in the ... oh never mind. Just boil it instead!