Down these mean streets a man must walk who is not himself mean...

Clive Owen. Raymond Chandler. Frank Miller. All of these things I like. A lot. At least two of these things make me swoon.

So excuse me for a moment, won’t you, if I go and have a long lie down on news that Frank Miller will be adapting Raymond Chandler’s book of short stories Trouble is My Business with Owen as the classic noir detective Philip Marlowe.

My. God. Not since Stephen Fry played the titular role in Wilde has there been such a splendid marriage between subject and medium or um fictional character and hot English dude playing that fictional character.

Chandler’s famous line to a struggling screenwriter was “when in doubt have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand”. Might I suggest, instead, to all the screenwriters off all the world: when in doubt have Clive Owen come through the door with a gun in his hand. And by ‘the door’ I mean ‘of my house’ and by ‘a gun in his hand’… well, I think we all know where that one goes…