Kathy Lette's Advice to George

I love this..........


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Before you tie the knot, George, here's your brief: Author Kathy Lette, herself married to a human-rights lawyer, has a few pointers for Mr Clooney...


Kathy Lette offers counsel to Mr Clooney as he prepares to wed his legal eagle fiancée



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+2
George and fiancée Amal Alamuddin pictured near his home in Italy last month


So, George Clooney is no longer footloose and fiancée-free. The world’s most famous bachelor is engaged to the beautiful Amal Alamuddin (who happens to be a human rights lawyer), and is due to marry imminently in Italy.
And, to think, it could have been me. You see, I briefly met George in 1987 when he was a budding actor and I was a lowly staff writer on the successful American sitcom The Facts of Life. We scribes, nine of us in all, were locked in a room all day at Columbia Pictures, and paid to write jokes. It was like being a stand-up comedian, except sitting down. 

We felt great antipathy towards the actors as they were paid so much more than we were. George casually asked me out for coffee one day. I said (and I can hardly type this without banging my head on the desk repeatedly) no. ‘I’m a writer, I don’t go out with actors,’ I replied in a supercilious voice. ‘You put other people’s words in your mouth, when you never know where they’ve been.’
Fast forward a few years. I was by now living in London with two small babies, delirious with lack of sleep and covered in baby sick, when one of my American writer pals visited. As I rustled up some supper, the medical drama ER was on TV in the background. Ogling Dr Ross, I gushed, ‘Oh, I could swim a mile through a pool of my own drool to get to that love god.’
My writer friend looked at me with incredulity. ‘But…but…that’s George Clooney. That’s the guy who you turned down for coffee!’ I let out a scream that could be heard on the Mir Space Station, then lay in the foetal position and sobbed for two days. Can you blame me?
Twenty-seven years on from his coffee offer, George is marrying a human rights lawyer. Which is, ironically, exactly what I did. Marrying into a life in the law may sound glamorous, but for the uninitiated (ie, George), let me offer a few survival tips. First off, the spouse of a human rights lawyer must get used to the fact that you will always come second. Yes, your legal eagle other half adores you, but they’re also very busy saving the world which means they work 24/7. And mainly for free.


Maybe even before the honeymoon’s over, you’ll be suffering from a chronic case of subpoena-envy. When my children were toddlers, I wanted Amnesty to take a black-and-white photo of me moping in my kitchen window on a rainy weekend, a crying baby on each hip, surrounded by barbed wire, captioned – ‘Liberate this poor woman. Married to a human rights lawyer!’
Their workaholic tendencies frequently stretch to holidays. My husband is always suggesting vacations in places such as Sierra Leone, where he has undertaken work for the UN. ‘The beaches are beautiful!’ he enthuses. Yes, but the only trouble is, do Prada make a bulletproof bikini? 

When he agreed to a holiday in Florida’s Disney World, I was thrilled! Finally the safe family vacation I’d always dreamed of. Little did I realise that he’d chosen it because of its proximity to an infamous death-row prison. While he dashed off to see an incarcerated client, I was left to walk around Disney World on my own, trailing two grumpy, grizzling children. Dead Mother Walking.
It’s hard not to go into martyr mode when your other half is called away to write an urgent submission and has to miss yet another dinner party/parent-teacher evening/school concert.
The spouse of a human rights lawyer must not expect any help around the house either. Yes, your lawyer partner may be adept at catching despots laundering money – but that means there’s no time left for them to put the washing machine on.
Nor will your home be your own. My attic has always been a safe haven for political dissidents, exiled opposition leaders, banned writers and IMOM (International Men of Mystery) such as Salman Rushdie and Julian Assange. This results in many impromptu conferences around my kitchen table. But holding meetings in your kitchen can be fraught with danger. It was a bad day for matrimonial harmony when I accidentally ate exhibit A.
But the main downside to marrying a lawyer is that you can never, ever win an argument. Barristers have been at university for so long they’ve got ivy growing up the backs of their legs. And what they’ve graduated in is Advanced Debating Skills. And it’s not just your legal eagle’s superior conversational ducking and diving that will have you flummoxed. They suffer from First Degree Knowledge. In other words, erudite human rights lawyers have a habit of telling you what you already know, except they say it in Latin: I-am-a-smarty-pants-icularis maximus. Plus a brainiac barrister just can’t help correcting your grammar, even when you’re talking dirty in bed.
Which segues neatly into the topic of sex. Are lawyers also fluent in body language? A girlfriend of mine who is married to an attorney puts all her sexual requirements on a legal notepad to be taken under advisement.
He makes her plea-bargain for foreplay. So, if you’re going to marry a lawyer I suggest you practise some legalistic pillow talk, such as, ‘Go ahead and hold me in contempt – or just hold me. Or, ‘I yield to the authority of the Bench.’


Another downside to marrying into the legal life is being spied on. Surveillance makes the paparazzi intrusion suffered by George Clooney look playful. The hours I’ve wasted being witty and pithy on the phone, in case the CIA might be eavesdropping. I mean, these transcripts could one day be read out in court and you want to look intellectual, yes, but also interesting – which is why it’s important to slip in a few references to whipped-cream orgies.
So how to tell if you really are under surveillance? Your first clue will be when your neighbour gets tipsy one night and tells you how much better you look in real life than through binoculars. Or when your postman seems to know a lot about your shower routine. Another dead giveaway is the parked van in the driveway which you don’t remember buying.
Death threats are also an occupational hazard for a human rights lawyer, but even more dangerous is the fact that you could expire with boredom at a legal dinner. Judges in their anecdotage put the bore into bordeaux. It would help if they came stamped with the warning ‘may cause drowsiness’.
But without doubt, the hardest thing about being married to a human rights lawyer is that they value their privacy above all else. If my lawyer husband ever finds out that I’ve written this, I’ll be divorced. Although, of course, he won’t call it divorce, but case closed.
And, George, just remember: when our human rights lawyer spouses are away slaving over a hot case file in some malaria-riddled fungal jungle, I’ll be available to take up your offer for coffee.

• Kathy’s latest novel Courting Trouble, to be published on Thursday, is the beginning of a series set in Britain’s first barrister-solicitor, mother-daughter boutique feminist law firm, which only takes on women’s cases and causes
  

Funny article.  Looks like she hasn't lost her witty writer's talent.  Good for her!

Mm. I'm sure there's nothing in that article she hasn't already said to his face!!

brava!

she was also really generous
letting him to us   

Am I the only one who finds her "humor" utterly humorless?  She is being disrespectful to her husband and to Amal.  TskTskTsk

Yes funny but Amal represents war criminals, so ... not much joy there.  

melbert wrote:Am I the only one who finds her "humor" utterly humorless?  She is being disrespectful to her husband and to Amal.  TskTskTsk

Yea so far you're the only one.

I think her hubby probably finds her humor a much needed relief from the horrors he has to face on a daily basis in his humanitarian work.  So I doubt he was offended.

Oh and Amal is marrying a guy who thinks it's funny to shit in cat boxes.  So i doubt she'd have any issue with what this gal said either.

party animal - not! wrote:I love this..........


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Before you tie the knot, George, here's your brief: Author Kathy Lette, herself married to a human-rights lawyer, has a few pointers for Mr Clooney...
By KATHY LETTE
PUBLISHED: 00:01, 10 August 2014 | UPDATED: 00:14, 10 August 2014


Kathy Lette offers counsel to Mr Clooney as he prepares to wed his legal eagle fiancée
+2
George and fiancée Amal Alamuddin pictured near his home in Italy last month
So, George Clooney is no longer footloose and fiancée-free. The world’s most famous bachelor is engaged to the beautiful Amal Alamuddin (who happens to be a human rights lawyer), and is due to marry imminently in Italy.
And, to think, it could have been me. You see, I briefly met George in 1987 when he was a budding actor and I was a lowly staff writer on the successful American sitcom The Facts of Life. We scribes, nine of us in all, were locked in a room all day at Columbia Pictures, and paid to write jokes. It was like being a stand-up comedian, except sitting down.
We felt great antipathy towards the actors as they were paid so much more than we were. George casually asked me out for coffee one day. I said (and I can hardly type this without banging my head on the desk repeatedly) no. ‘I’m a writer, I don’t go out with actors,’ I replied in a supercilious voice. ‘You put other people’s words in your mouth, when you never know where they’ve been.’
Fast forward a few years. I was by now living in London with two small babies, delirious with lack of sleep and covered in baby sick, when one of my American writer pals visited. As I rustled up some supper, the medical drama ER was on TV in the background. Ogling Dr Ross, I gushed, ‘Oh, I could swim a mile through a pool of my own drool to get to that love god.’
My writer friend looked at me with incredulity. ‘But…but…that’s George Clooney. That’s the guy who you turned down for coffee!’ I let out a scream that could be heard on the Mir Space Station, then lay in the foetal position and sobbed for two days. Can you blame me?
Twenty-seven years on from his coffee offer, George is marrying a human rights lawyer. Which is, ironically, exactly what I did. Marrying into a life in the law may sound glamorous, but for the uninitiated (ie, George), let me offer a few survival tips. First off, the spouse of a human rights lawyer must get used to the fact that you will always come second. Yes, your legal eagle other half adores you, but they’re also very busy saving the world which means they work 24/7. And mainly for free.
+2
Kathy Lette: 'The main downside to marrying a lawyer is that you can never, ever win an argument'
Maybe even before the honeymoon’s over, you’ll be suffering from a chronic case of subpoena-envy. When my children were toddlers, I wanted Amnesty to take a black-and-white photo of me moping in my kitchen window on a rainy weekend, a crying baby on each hip, surrounded by barbed wire, captioned – ‘Liberate this poor woman. Married to a human rights lawyer!’
Their workaholic tendencies frequently stretch to holidays. My husband is always suggesting vacations in places such as Sierra Leone, where he has undertaken work for the UN. ‘The beaches are beautiful!’ he enthuses. Yes, but the only trouble is, do Prada make a bulletproof bikini?
When he agreed to a holiday in Florida’s Disney World, I was thrilled! Finally the safe family vacation I’d always dreamed of. Little did I realise that he’d chosen it because of its proximity to an infamous death-row prison. While he dashed off to see an incarcerated client, I was left to walk around Disney World on my own, trailing two grumpy, grizzling children. Dead Mother Walking.
It’s hard not to go into martyr mode when your other half is called away to write an urgent submission and has to miss yet another dinner party/parent-teacher evening/school concert.
The spouse of a human rights lawyer must not expect any help around the house either. Yes, your lawyer partner may be adept at catching despots laundering money – but that means there’s no time left for them to put the washing machine on.
Nor will your home be your own. My attic has always been a safe haven for political dissidents, exiled opposition leaders, banned writers and IMOM (International Men of Mystery) such as Salman Rushdie and Julian Assange. This results in many impromptu conferences around my kitchen table. But holding meetings in your kitchen can be fraught with danger. It was a bad day for matrimonial harmony when I accidentally ate exhibit A.
But the main downside to marrying a lawyer is that you can never, ever win an argument. Barristers have been at university for so long they’ve got ivy growing up the backs of their legs. And what they’ve graduated in is Advanced Debating Skills. And it’s not just your legal eagle’s superior conversational ducking and diving that will have you flummoxed. They suffer from First Degree Knowledge. In other words, erudite human rights lawyers have a habit of telling you what you already know, except they say it in Latin: I-am-a-smarty-pants-icularis maximus. Plus a brainiac barrister just can’t help correcting your grammar, even when you’re talking dirty in bed.
Which segues neatly into the topic of sex. Are lawyers also fluent in body language? A girlfriend of mine who is married to an attorney puts all her sexual requirements on a legal notepad to be taken under advisement.
He makes her plea-bargain for foreplay. So, if you’re going to marry a lawyer I suggest you practise some legalistic pillow talk, such as, ‘Go ahead and hold me in contempt – or just hold me. Or, ‘I yield to the authority of the Bench.’
'Human rights lawyers tell you what you already know, except in Latin'

Another downside to marrying into the legal life is being spied on. Surveillance makes the paparazzi intrusion suffered by George Clooney look playful. The hours I’ve wasted being witty and pithy on the phone, in case the CIA might be eavesdropping. I mean, these transcripts could one day be read out in court and you want to look intellectual, yes, but also interesting – which is why it’s important to slip in a few references to whipped-cream orgies.
So how to tell if you really are under surveillance? Your first clue will be when your neighbour gets tipsy one night and tells you how much better you look in real life than through binoculars. Or when your postman seems to know a lot about your shower routine. Another dead giveaway is the parked van in the driveway which you don’t remember buying.
Death threats are also an occupational hazard for a human rights lawyer, but even more dangerous is the fact that you could expire with boredom at a legal dinner. Judges in their anecdotage put the bore into bordeaux. It would help if they came stamped with the warning ‘may cause drowsiness’.
But without doubt, the hardest thing about being married to a human rights lawyer is that they value their privacy above all else. If my lawyer husband ever finds out that I’ve written this, I’ll be divorced. Although, of course, he won’t call it divorce, but case closed.
And, George, just remember: when our human rights lawyer spouses are away slaving over a hot case file in some malaria-riddled fungal jungle, I’ll be available to take up your offer for coffee.
Kathy’s latest novel Courting Trouble, to be published on Thursday, is the beginning of a series set in Britain’s first barrister-solicitor, mother-daughter boutique feminist law firm, which only takes on women’s cases and causes


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I enjoyed that. She's a witty writer.

Each profession has its own brand of humour which can
look totally outrageous to those outside of the particular profession.
Having worked in a Local Authority Social Services dept. for 22 years it's very much needed in order to survive some of the things that have to be dealt with.

The writing is wonderful.  But it doesn't sound like Amal.  She hardly gives the impression of a workaholic.  She's literally been on holiday ( with a few days exception here and there) since last Sept.  Don't see much changing post wedding, either.

I don't think we have clue about her work commitments since September 2013 ....do we ?
Anyone can do their work in any place at any time,
now with modern technology.

IE......I'm impressed with online Banking and haven't needed to join a queue in my Bank for years now.
It's Bliss.   

melbert wrote:Am I the only one who finds her "humor" utterly humorless?  She is being disrespectful to her husband and to Amal.  TskTskTsk

No you are not the only one Mel. I find her humor belittling and crass. I'm also tired of hearing about the coffee incident it was only coffee and she thought who she was even back then.

PigPen wrote:The writing is wonderful.  But it doesn't sound like Amal.  She hardly gives the impression of a workaholic.  She's literally been on holiday ( with a few days exception here and there) since last Sept.  Don't see much changing post wedding, either.

I think that's unfair. Where was she today? Yesterday? Saturday? Last Friday? In fact the whole of last week? We've no idea. Since last September (nearly a year ago) how many holidays have we seen her on? There aren't any paparazzi photographers in her office so we've no idea if she's pulling 15-hour days, seven days a week. All we see is the one or two days off she has a week (known as weekends to the rest of us) and the various travels she's been on, which haven't been all that excessive by European standards (I understand in the US that two weeks a year is average, but not on this side of the pond where four + weeks a year is more realistic).

She's self-employed in a job that has busy periods and quiet periods. None of us know how long she spends at work because it's not documented.

I understand what you're saying Katie.  But, here's what I "see"
safari, Canada (film festival), NY, CA, Washington, Cabo ( Nov and Thom's wedding), Italy (all over the place), NY for shower, back to Italy. Whew, I'm pooped.
  If this is typical vacation in Europe, I'm swimming over.  Yes, here we average 2 weeks ( more if you're lucky enough in this economy not to be laid off, and are with the same company 8 plus years).  But wow, that's a lot of down time for someone who just stated she has  8 cases.

Pigpen    Hahahaha

So, we've seen a one week safari, three days in Canada, two days in New York, a flying visit to WAshington, a week in Cabo, various weekends/days in Italy and another flying visit to New York. How much is that in total? Six weeks? Eight weeks? Over an entire year. And we've no idea how many late nights, how many weekends, how many holidays were worked to balance this time off.

Alisonfan, I wasn't trying to be funny, but rather stating a point.

Not long ago, we were discussing, on another thread ( God only knows which one, at this point) that this relationship was quite similar to his other romances.  He holds firm, she is by his side playing the dutiful gf.  Only difference-she got the ring. Am I the only one who remembers this.  I'm just confirming my original opinion.  She's making herself reaaaaaaaly available for him ( as did all the others).  You can't be busting your @#%^*& with long hours, inspite of high technology so being in the office is no longer necessary, and maintaining the George factor.  Can't be done. 

"sorry honey, can't go on a quick trip to Venice, Canada, Ca.  I have to do 4 conference calls and write a brief in the next couple of days" Yeah, he'd put up with that for how long??  

if i sound cranky- can I blame the super full moon we've had the past 3 days?

Katiedot wrote:So, we've seen a one week safari, three days in Canada, two days in New York, a flying visit to WAshington, a week in Cabo, various weekends/days in Italy and another flying visit to New York.  How much is that in total?  Six weeks?  Eight weeks?  Over an entire year.  And we've no idea how many late nights, how many weekends, how many holidays were worked to balance this time off.

Agree to disagree.

First of all, she's self-employed. So how she handles eight portfolios is up to her.

Secondly to currently be handling eight international cases doesn't sound much like lying on the beach to me - unless she takes the legal tomes of reference in her beachbag

Thirdly, she is hardly going to be offered all these high-profile cases if she's not likely to meet deadlines for all her clients, and it would appear that she is incredibly high-regarded. So much so, she is being offered posts on commissions such as this one of extraordinary importance

PAN, I'd agree on the third statement, except all the articles I've read, also have to identify her as G's fiancee.  In this arena, shouldn't she be able to stand alone on her own name as a barrister?

PigPen wrote:PAN, I'd agree on the third statement, except all the articles I've read, also have to identify her as G's fiancee.  In this arena, shouldn't she be able to stand alone on her own name as a barrister?

But SHE's not the one giving herself the title. It's the media. So to hold that against her is quite unfair.

Who writes the articles quoting "Amal Alamuddin, who is 
engaged to Hollywood actor George Clooney" blah blah.
Does Amal write them herself 
Does her sister write them ?
Does her mother write them ?
Does George write them ?

Journalists want their articles noted so they use the two names George Clooney in order to do that....don't they ?
We've seen it umpteen times, so why blame Amal for the journalists continually doing so ? 
 

I have to agree on this;
Journalists want their articles noted so they use the two names George Clooney in order to do that....don't they ?
We've seen it umpteen times, so why blame Amal for the journalists continually doing so ?
I don't know how much flying they do to meet up but that has to be part of their life style because of the businesses each are in.

Yes, she's not known outside of legal circles, so journalists writing in the popular press will label her. It's not her choice to be known as George Clooney's fiancee but it's what journalists do.

They do it to everyone. It always amuses me when I read articles about George which qualify him as "actor, Ocean's 11" as if he wasn't famous enough!

Another Kathy Lette article about her new book, this time the London Evening Standard

She's off to Como - but sworn to secrecy...........

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Kathy Lette: I can go from tea at the Palace to beer with single mums. It’s like being coated in Vaseline


Aussie author Kathy Lette is London’s social superglue. She tells Nick Curtis why her friends George and Amal make the perfect Mr and Mrs Clooney and how she once stole Nigella’s man

Since I’m a bad-joke aficionado and so is Kathy Lette, I suspect our weary colleagues engineered this interview hoping we’d both explode in a bout of relentless pun-upmanship. Whatever, when we meet for tea at the Savoy (her treat, she used to be writer- in-residence there) the 55-year-old Australian novelist is a complete delight. She is game, gossipy, knows absolutely everyone, and beneath the blizzard of flip antipodean banter is undoubtedly A Good Thing. Witness her latest book, Courting Trouble, which is as full of quips as previous works Mad Cows and Foetal Attraction but also promotes a feminist message.

The book is part legal thriller, part romance, part frontline report from the battle for equality. Its heroine — leggy chocaholic barrister Matilda Devine — is left by her husband and fired from her chambers. So she moves in and then joins forces with her brash Aussie solicitor mother to prosecute women’s causes. It’s Ab Fab meets The Accused, and the first in a planned series: the TV rights are already sold.

“Feminism is in the zeitgeist again, thank goodness,” Lette says. “There’s a real resurgence among young women — the Everyday Sexism project, Caitlin Moran, Lena Dunham — which is so exciting. Finally it’s fashionable to be a feminist, and especially a funny feminist.” Though Lette thinks some things have gone backwards for women. Apart from FGM and kidnapping in the wider world, at home women still earn less, carry the burden of childcare and worse.
“The Twitter trolling last year [of the currency campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez and others] was devastating — the level of misogyny underneath the surface,” Lette says. “I also wanted to write about the brutal cross- examination of women in rape trials.”
The book details the use of the internet for abuse, coercion and revenge porn, and contains some shocking courtroom dialogue. “Every line you read in the book was taken verbatim from trials. It’s horrific.”

Lette’s machine-gun punning has obscured the fact that she has always talked about serious issues. Her first novel, 1979’s Puberty Blues, described what it was like to grow up as a smart, sassy girl amid the neolithic surf hunks of the Sydney suburbs, where “Germaine Greer” was rhyming slang for beer.  The book propelled her into a career as a newspaper columnist and sitcom writer. In her last book, The Boy Who Fell to Earth, she detailed — with his permission — what it’s like to be the mother of her son Julius, 23, who has Asperger’s syndrome.
“That was the most serious, heartfelt book I have ever written,” she says. “I just dipped my pen into my artery. And it worked. The critics asked why I tried to be funny, but anyone with a kid with special needs knows that the only thing that keeps you going is a black sense of humour.”

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.][size=11]Amal Alamuddin and George Clooney[/size]


She is very funny on Julius’s compulsive honesty, such as his pointing out her nascent moustache while she’s flirting with Hugh Jackman. She gets a lots of grateful mail from parents in similar situations and has become a spokesperson for autism charities. “Me and Temple Grandin [the talented American scientist with autism] do a double act.”

It’s surprising Lette has never set a novel in the legal world before. Her husband, the father of Julius and of their daughter Georgina, 21, (just graduated with a double-first, Lette proudly tells me) is the leading human-rights barrister and author Geoffrey Robertson. A fellow Australian, Robertson was John Mortimer’s deputy on the Oz trial in 1970 and more recently defended Julian Assange. She says it’s awful being married to a human-rights QC “because they are always working, 24/7, for nothing — my two least favourite words are ‘pro’ and ‘bono’ — and you can never get the moral high ground”. Helen Fielding made Bridget Jones’s boyfriend Mark Darcy a human-rights lawyer after hearing Lette describe their life. Lette and Robertson met in 1988 on an episode of his ABC TV show Hypotheticals. “Can you imagine what it’s like to have live footage of yourself falling in love?” goggles Lette. “I can see myself flirting with him. My eyelash-batting average was higher than Allan Border’s. Women are aroused by intellect and I had never met anyone like him before.”
They talked till 2am and he proposed two weeks later, their whirlwind romance only slightly impeded by the fact she was married to Australian TV executive Kim Williams at the time and Robertson was dating Nigella Lawson.

“When I first moved here there was a lot of hostility in the press,” she says. “The gist of it was: how could this handsome QC break up with this gorgeous domestic goddess, the daughter of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, for a loud-mouthed colonial nymphomaniac. I’m like: how dare they call me a loudmouth? It was a different world in 1988. People would hear my Australian accent and their nostrils would go up in the air. I really didn’t know whether I’d survive. Then I met John and Penny Mortimer and I knew it would be all right.” Mortimer’s actress daughter Emily has bought the rights to The Boy Who Fell to Earth.
Today, Lette is a fully fledged member of the liberal Establishment, and really does seem to know everyone. Nigella is now a friend: she and Charles Saatchi came to a launch party Lette held at the Savoy shortly before their break-up. Lette knew she’d been fully accepted into English society when she was asked to present polo cups, and a kiss, to Princes William and Harry two years ago: she asked William if he wanted tongues. “English people compartmentalise because of the class system, whereas Australians are used to mixing in,” she theorises. “I can go from tea at Buckingham Palace to beer with single mums on a council estate with ease. It’s like being coated in Vaseline.”

Courting Trouble is dedicated to her best friend, Helena Kennedy QC, and she has a posse of gal-pals she calls her Wonderbras, because they support each other and make each other look bigger and better: Ruby Wax, Maureen Lipman, Sandi Toksvig, Jo Brand and Ronni Ancona. She has persuaded other chums — Mark Haddon, Stephen Fry, David Hare — to name villains in their next works after Lord Chancellor Chris Grayling, as she did in Courting Trouble, so incensed was she at his planned ban on books for prisoners (“I’m from convict stock”). When she was given an honorary doctorate from Southampton Solent University in 2009 Lette had a party where everyone wore educational garb: “Dannii Minogue came in school uniform and Rolf Harris came in his robes. I might have to airbrush him from the photos.” (Harris always “had a reputation for being a cuddle bunny”, she says, but the full revelation of his predilections “sent seismic shock waves through Australia”.)

There’s a rather more appealing and more recently famous figure looming over our conversation. Robertson’s junior counsel in the Assange case was Amal Alamuddin, the British-Lebanese barrister who will marry George Clooney by Lake Como later this year.
“He’s lucky to have her,” says Lette bluntly. “She’s not only incredibly brainy and beautiful, she’s really kind, very funny, deliciously self-deprecating. If I looked like her I’d have love-bites on my mirror, but she doesn’t have any vanity about her. They are both passionate about human rights. She has an idiosyncratic, quirky style all her own and is a real woman’s woman. When [Lette’s daughter] Georgie got her results, we had tea with Amal afterwards, and she was so kind.”

Lette and Robertson are not going to the wedding but have been invited out to Lake Como afterwards, and she is sworn to secrecy about the dress, the ceremony, etc. Was she star-struck when she learned her friend was marrying a film god? Of course not.
“I knew him a long time ago, back in 1987,” says Lette. “He was an actor on the show I was writing in America, The Facts of Life. I didn’t spot that he was gonna be famous; I just wished he’d shave off those sideburns.”

The prospect of a scoop looms, Lette having told me earlier that in Australia two women who have slept with the same man will bond over it. I don’t suppose, I say, that you and gorgeous George ever…
“I wish!” she yelps. “He did ask me for coffee once and I said no. ‘You’re an actor, you put other people’s words in your mouth and you don’t know where they’ve been!’” Lette pulls a clownishly tragic face. “Imagine how much I regret that now!”

Courting Trouble is published by Bantam Press on August 14

party animal - not! wrote:I love this..........


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Found this article to be rude/insensitive to both GC/Amal .....and unnecesary!! 

Interesting, cos she's a friend. Have a look at the other one I've posted.........

Sorry Party animal can't see another article posted.

Trouble is I don't think KL was joking...she wouldn't be able to put together that type of information. She hasn't painted a nice picture for GC! imo

She I talking about her experiences...I think?

I'm not blaming Amal for the fiancee title.  My question is, why does the press find it necessary to use it in order for the reader to know who she is.  She's had famous clients, was briefly linked to a UN Committee.  Her name and work should identify her without mentioning George. Last night ( or real early this AM) Fox TV News ran the story. They showed a photo of George and Amal, and started the story with "George Clooney's fiancee turns down UN".  Okay, in the States maybe she needs that intro, but not everywhere.  Good God, am I really defending her.  Excuse me while I get more coffee!!

Yes you were PigPen. *shock*

Quite agree but unfortunately how many clicks do you think their headline would get if it said, "Amal Alamuddin turns down UN appointment"

Most people would go - Huh? And who cares?

But putting George in the title and you get click, click, click, click.

It's all about hit count that they can sell to their advertisers.

But she DOES need that intro. Think back 12 months: if you'd read then that Amal Alamuddin had turned down a UN job, would you have known who she was? She's only been dating/engaged to George for under a year and is still barely on anyone's radar.

This story is only being widely reported because of the clooney connection and she's not famous enough in her own right (and I doubt ever will be). Pretty much anything she ever does in her professional life is going to be reported as George Clooney's wife did xyz for years to come, no matter how impressive or significant it is.

Ok I maybe have a blond moment and I'm the only one but who is Kathy Lette again? I mean what's her connection with George? And what about the coffee accident Mazy mentioned above? I think I'm really lost at the moment

She's a writer who, many years ago (while working as a writer on a TV show that George was on) was asked out by him for a coffee and she turned him down.

She's repeated this story at every book launch she's had in the past 10 years.  We've got at least five threads on her on this forum alone.

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ah ok thanks....very helpful.... will check out those threads   

I'm sure she regrets it already that she turned him down hehehe That's why she still talks about him

Nicky80 wrote:Ok I maybe have a blond moment and I'm the only one but who is Kathy Lette again? I mean what's her connection with George? And what about the coffee accident Mazy mentioned above? I think I'm really lost at the moment

Hi Nicky
I wrote incident not accident. He asked her out for coffee and she turned him down very snarky like.