Beauty is in the eye of the beautiful 

Julia Roberts, who is defined by two films — Pretty Woman opposite Richard Gere in 1990 and Notting Hill opposite Hugh Grant in 1999 — says she is “very flattered” to have been named “the World’s Most Beautiful Woman” by America’s People magazine for a record fifth time.

Roberts, now 49, first claimed the spot as a 23-year-old in 1991, and then won the title again in 2000, 2005 and 2010.

So it says something that her choice of “most beautiful woman in the world” fell some years ago on Aishwarya Rai.

Of course, to call anyone “the most beautiful woman in the world” is statistically nonsensical. However, it remains the case that global notions of what is beautiful is still governed to a very great extent by Hollywood — and in India by Bollywood where the heroines are mostly “fair and lovely”.

I remember an experiment where black judges were picked for a beauty contest moved to South Africa. They, too, were brainwashed and went for the blondes and ignored the African contestants. 

I also recall a Bengali girl who had come to London on a journalism scholarship — and used her time wisely to enjoy a brief romance in Paris and another in London. 

“No, I’m not keen on going back to Calcutta,” she admitted on the eve of her return home, “because everyone in the office will again make fun of my complexion and say, ‘Who will marry her?’”

During her six months in the West she had discovered something new and confidence-building — that her dark complexion actually made her more attractive, “exotic” even, for many men.

Damn good game

When the Indian Premier League first came on the scene, it was damned by the English cricketing establishment and writers. But now that Jos Buttler, Ben Stokes, Chris Woakes, Sam Billings, Jason Roy, Eoin Morgan, Chris Jordan and Tymal Mills are playing in IPL X, coverage has become very positive.

Whether IPL inspires great writing remains to be seen. Of Prince Ranji (rubbished by Shashi Tharoor in India: An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India), Neville Cardus had written memorably: “…when he batted a strange light was seen for the first time on English fields, a light out of the East. It was lovely magic...”

I have just managed to get hold of a copy of Ranji by Alan Ross, having long believed the biography was out of print.

Also, last week it was announced that the “Cricket Society and MCC Book of the Year 2017”, worth £3,000, is A Beautiful Game, My Love Affair with Cricket (Allen & Unwin) by Mark Nicholas, broadcaster and former Hampshire captain who beat off competition from five others.

Whether one day there should be a new IPL — the Indian Political League — is a subject that could be up for discussion. If foreign coaches be recruited in cricket and football, then why not in politics?

Calling time 

Narendra Modi and Theresa May are both included in Time’s “100 Most Influential People”.

May’s gushing mini-biog has been written by New Zealand Prime Minister Bill English, who declares: “She is the right person to guide the democratic will of Britain through the complexity of separating the UK from the European Union.”

The Indian PM’s has been penned by Pankaj Mishra, who warns readers that Modi’s “vision of India’s economic, geopolitical and cultural supremacy is far from being realised, and his extended family of Hindu nationalists have taken to scapegoating secular and liberal intellectuals as well as poor Muslims”.

Rising Riz  

Also included in Time’s “100 Most Influential People” is the ubiquitous British Asian actor, Riz Khan, whom I have just seen in an entertaining small-budget UK film, City of Tiny Lights, a kind of LA Confidential set in the seamier parts of London.

Riz, 34, plays a private detective, Tommy Akhtar, who is asked to investigate when a Russian prostitute goes missing. Roshan Seth plays his posh-sounding father, Farzad Akhtar. 

In the US, Riz played Naz in HBO’s The Night Of. And he has been cast as “Bodhi Rook in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, defecting to the Rebel Alliance and breaking our collective heart!”

Time this year has five different covers, one of them with Riz. 

Tittle tattle 

The witty English poet, Pam Ayres, 70, has added a much needed touch of humour to the British general election campaign.

She issued a tweet in verse: “The shock wave passed; the dust is clearing,/ Seven weeks electioneering/ Rhetoric, hot air and gas,/ I’m on my way to Dignitas.”

(Dignitas in Switzerland provides assisted suicide to people suffering from terminal illness.)

One of her many fans responded in verse: “Look in the bright side; don’t get the hump. At least we won’t end up with Trump.”