You need only see a photograph of 54-year-old actor Bruce Willis and his new bride, the 30-year-old model Emma Hemming, to understand a few of the many benefits of attracting a younger spouse. But the generation gap brings with it some special pitfalls, too, as his first wife Demi Moore discovered on Saturday at Willis's wedding.
Along with her current husband, 31-year-old Ashton Kutcher, the 46-year-old Moore was privately preparing to attend her ex's nuptials at Parrot Cay, on the Turks and Caicos Islands, when an image of her bikini-clad behind appeared on the internet. The picture wasn't the work of some sly professional photographer, however, but an amusing entry on the Twitter feed of her own young partner. Who needs the paparazzi when celebrities will snap their own thong shots?
Kutcher is famous as an "actor", but perhaps his truer calling was as the presenter of Punk'd, a show in which he played practical jokes on good-humoured fellow celebs. Think Beadle's About for the MTV generation. The comedian Chris Rock once speculated that Kutcher's marriage to Moore was in fact part of an elaborate "punk" at Willis's expense.
Tweeting (sending a message via the Twitter micro-blogging site) from the otherwise media-free nuptials, Kutcher first explained to his 400,000-plus followers that he was "watching [his] wife steam [his] suit while wearing a bikini. I love God!" (He soon clarified that it was, of course, his wife that was wearing the bikini, not himself, and that "that's what makes it so glorious".)
Finally, he captured the scene with his megapixel-rich cameraphone, writing alongside the image, of Moore bending over to do his ironing for him, the warning: "Shhh don't tell wifey." Kutcher's tone of childish glee is only exacerbated by the fact that he seems to have snapped the image of his wife's bottom from behind a sofa.
Is this a quick dig at his new buddy Bruce, reminding him how hot his ex-wife still is? Or is it meant to make Moore feel better as she watches her ex-husband attach himself to a newer, ahem, model? Or is it simply another of Kutcher's endless stream of charmingly indiscreet practical jokes?
Moore has her own Twitter account (240,000-plus followers – not as many as Ashton, but perhaps it's a generational thing), making the Kushtons King and Queen of the Hollywood Twitterverse. Many of her tweets are exasperated responses to his immature behaviour, such as the time he tweeted an irate video complaining about the early-morning racket caused by their neighbours' home improvements. Following a stern talking to from "wifey", Kutcher repented online, pledging to be more tolerant in future.
Moore wasn't overly displeased to see her derrière plastered all over the internet, though. She soon "re-tweeted" the image to her own considerable collection of followers. "He is such a sneak," she wrote, "and while I was steaming his suit too!" Hit & Run awaits the first Willis-Hemming tweets with bated breath, though we would advise against any bikini shots of Bruce: "Shhhh, don't tell hubby!" Tim Walker
Obama's green shoots
Change has spread, like ivy in reverse, from the White House to its lawn, in the form of a kitchen garden. Showing that the "green shoots" of economic recovery can begin, symbolically at least, in the back yard, Michelle Obama helped dig the groundbreaking vegetable patch (the first since Roosevelt's wartime "victory garden") over the weekend. But why does the presidential planting plan include exotic Mexican tomatillos, Thai basil and mangetouts? Surely austere times demand carrots, kale and cabbages? Or why not follow the example of Woodrow Wilson, who deployed sheep on his lawns to save money during the First World War? Cancel that Portuguese water dog – the Obamas need a border collie. Simon Usborne
A first-class ticket to heavy metal heaven
The latest heavy metal rockumentary turning it up to 11 is Flight 666, the story of Iron Maiden's Somewhere Back in Time world tour of 2008. Following in the wake of other unintentionally hilarious air-punching classics – Anvil! The Story of Anvil, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster (2004) and, of course, the genre-defining This is Spinal Tap (1984) – the film promises to show many a head-banging excess.
Centre stage is the Maidens' own private jet, Ed Force One, which has the band's logo emblazoned across it and is piloted by the group's lead singer and qualified commercial pilot, Bruce Dickinson (right). The movie, which is released in Britain on 21 April ("Maiden Day"), follows the rocksmiths as they play 23 gigs in 45 days, travel 44,000 miles, and perform to almost 500,000 fans.
The critics love it: Flight 666 yesterday picked up the coveted 24 Beats Per Second award for best music documentary at the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas.
Smell the glove, y'all. Rob Sharp
Comments