An unmasked Sacha Baron Cohen has revealed that the United Nations barred him from shooting The Dictator at its New York headquarters because his comic portrayal of a Middle East tyrant would embarrass the heads of member states.

The first laugh comes before the film has even started. "In loving memory of Kim Jong-il" reads the dedication title. It pretty much sets the tone for The Dictator, a broad, hit-and-miss satire about an Arab tyrant's indulgence of his capricious – and murderous – will.

It doesn't quite hit despot...

The sunbaked Cannes Film Festival got under way with Wes Anderson's “Moonrise Kingdom,” whose carefully composed whimsy stood in stark contrast to the zoo-like atmosphere at the annual French Riviera extravaganza.

North African despot General Aladeen hates the West and is just weeks away from acquiring weapons-grade plutonium. No laughing matter - unless you're a Sacha Baron Cohen fan

Sacha Baron Cohen brought guns, girls and the expected dose of controversy to the red carpet

There is, sad to report, a new reason for national embarrassment. Unusually, it has nothing to do with Jeremy Clarkson, Julian Fellowes or Simon Cowell; indeed, unlike those Britons, this source of shame can be relied upon never to say anything controversial. Time magazine has just announced its annual Time 100 list of the world's most influential people. No British politicians appeared on the list, but the Middleton sisters – one a new princess, the other the sister of a new princess – are included, heralded as "avatars of aspiration".

Spoof from Baron Cohen's film played by mistake at medal ceremony

The Government gave us all food for thought last week when it finally published the first data from its long-awaited report on happiness. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) interviewed 80,000 people for its National Well-being Programme, and now it can tell us with some certainty that, on a happiness scale from 0 to 10, people in the UK are, on average, 7.6 happy.

Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried are lovers on the run in a future world where the rich can stay young for ever, while the poor are killed off when their money runs out.

And the first big winner at this weekend’s Academy Awards is... Sacha Baron Cohen. The British comedian won’t be getting within a country mile of a golden statuette, of course, but that hasn’t prevented him from already managing to successfully hijack Sunday’s event for PR purposes.

What better for a cold January night in double dip Britain than an injection of warming political satire?

Another better-than-fiction documentary from James Marsh (Man on Wire), Project Nim looks back at a 1970s experiment to turn a baby chimp into a hairy human being.

Mr Drew of Passmores school was my hero, in a year in which the reality show got a bit more real