Gender Studies 101

Guardian writer Julie Burchill questions Russell Crowe’s status as “sole standard bearer” for old-school Hollywood hell-raising in the wake of his latest public brawl. Back in the bad old days, she notes, stars did without the “semi-official conga lines of minders-cum-hangers-on” upon which the modern day tough-guy depends. Fellow gender issues reporter Peter Bradshaw doesn’t even believe in the bad boys of old. Crowe, he claims, is “just the latest in a line of posturing pugilists [using] drink and brawling to distract both us and himself from the fact that he does a girly-boy job”!