George Clooney: This time, the joke's on him

Not since an audience of 30 million viewers tuned in to see those flirting Eighties neighbours Sharon Maughan and Anthony Head (that's the prime minister in Little Britain to you, kids) pucker up over a cup of Gold Blend has a coffee commercial had so much cachet.

George Clooney, the Oscar-winning most attractive man on earth and United Nations messenger of peace, is building up a head of steam online with a series of short films he has made for Nespresso, Nestlé's highly successful (and lavishly marketed) Italian coffee brand. And rarely has the heart-throb actor looked as if he is having quite so much fun.

The films are a Clooney masterclass in self-deprecation, as he mocks his Hollywood superstar status while beautiful women flutter around his espresso maker, hoping to share a quickie ristretto or maybe a more satisfying and longer-lasting lungo. It's all in the twinkling eyes, the crow's feet and the frown lines – Clooney showing a breadth of facial expression that leaves Jose Mourinho looking as blank as a poker player with a Botox addiction.

And it's the interactive nature of the clips that makes them all the more appealing, with viewers (who have to be members of the Nespresso club) being invited to vote for their favourite of three variations on a theme, respectively termed Decaffeinato, Arpeggio and Vivalto, in homage to different Nespresso offerings.

So, in Decaffeinato we see the actor sat in a Milanese café with a shot of coffee, when he spies a woman with designs on his ground beans. He hides behind his magazine but the exercise in disguise is rendered pointless by the fact that Clooney's mug is on the cover. No matter, the coffee snatcher is not interested in the film star, and she swipes his Nespresso and disappears before he emerges from behind his mag. Self-deprecation, you see. And the suggestion is that a cup of coffee made from a not very stylish-looking aluminium capsule that looks like an instant milk carton from a hotel bedside table is more enticing than George.

Or you might prefer the Arpeggio ending, in which George squirts a drink out of his Nespresso machine just as he's approached by a glamorous female asking for a photo. Clooney turns briefly to the wall to fix his smiley facial expression in readiness for the fan picture (more self-deprecation) and then turns to the girl. "Of us," she corrects the film star, who is relieved of his coffee and given, instead, a camera to photograph the girl and her boyfriend. The bumptious boy then downs George's drink, leaving the A-lister aghast as he flashes the camera without even looking at the young posing couple (yet more self-deprecation).

In the Vivalto variation, George is seated in an armchair in the same café, with the same magazine, when another gorgeous lady plonks herself in the adjacent seat and flashes him a smile. Thinking he's being hit upon, Clooney gives her a glimpse of his cover story, with a shrug to say it's no big deal. He places the magazine on the table beside his coffee, then shifts his body position to face his female companion. All this happens just as she is handed a screaming toddler by her husband, leaving Clooney to turn back to his espresso, as the kid shrieks into his ear.

That's George – ever the wallflower. The divorcee who bet Nicole Kidman and Michelle Pfeiffer $10,000 apiece that he would not have kids by the age of 40 and then sent their cheques back, wagering double or nothing that he would still be without children by the time he hit 50.

He's now 47 and women continue to live in hope. Well, quite a lot of them. Not those associated with groups such as Baby Milk Action, who can't stand Nestlé because of its marketing of baby formula in the developing world. Clooney found himself being grilled at last year's Venice Film Festival over the appropriateness of his relationship with Nestlé, especially after the movie Michael Clayton, in which he gave an Oscar-nominated performance as a lawyer fighting against the sinister practices of a global corporation.

None of which is particularly helpful to the public image of a man who has been an active campaigner on environmental issues and has consistently spoken out against the conflicts in Darfur and Iraq.

Indeed, Nespresso itself is rather an elitist concept, a club supposedly for the coffee cognoscenti, who sign up to receive a magazine that was described by one recipient as being "as hateful as Tatler but with an overbearing and whorish emphasis on coffee pods bunged in for good measure".

What the Italian coffee enthusiasts who live near Clooney's villa in Lake Como make of their celebrated neighbour's passion for a Nestlé Nespresso we can only wonder. But no doubt he will give them a little shrug, a wink of the eye, place an order for a doppio, and all will be forgiven.

Sign up at www.nespresso.com to see the films or, to see them on YouTube without voting, go, for example, to www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfyeXrdZZ1o ; www.youtube.com/watch? v=ycbq_WvgQi4