Miramax's coup: Hollywood treatment for Africa oil plot

The tale of the Brit ex-public schoolboy adventurers and their failed plot to overthrow the despotic president of Equatorial Guinea is one of greed, indiscretion and incompetence.

The scent of petrodollars sloshing around the former Spanish colony had blinded the 80 mercenaries to their inadequacies. In March 2004, their plane was impounded in Zimbabwe, where they were allegedly buying arms. They did not get their "splodges of wonga", and many - including the leader, former SAS officer Simon Mann, above - were imprisoned in African jails. Some were tortured.

I hear that Miramax has agreed to buy the rights to make a film of the cocked-up coup, based on the book The Wonga Coup by journalist Adam Roberts.

The cast of supporting characters is irresistible. Mann's investors included Mark Thatcher (aka "Scratcher"), son of Maggie, who paid for a helicopter and narrowly escaped imprisonment himself. A mysterious J H Archer contributed £75,000 - the novelist and peer Jeffrey Archer insists it is not him.

There is as yet no production schedule, but any movie would tap into Hollywood's current appetite for Africa, which has spawned The Constant Gardener, The Blood Diamond and The Last King of Scotland (about Idi Amin's murderous regime in Uganda).

"We're optimistic Miramax will actually make it," Roberts tells me. "Nic Cage would be good as Mann - he's ageing, but has a very hard edge."

Grisham's real-life charm offensive

His 18 thriller novels have sold 200 million copies and spawned eight Hollywood movies - but until Saturday, at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, John Grisham had never met his British readers.

Grisham's first non-fiction work, The Innocent Man, out tomorrow, is about Ronald Williamson, a mentally ill former baseball player from Oklahoma almost executed for a rape and murder he didn't commit.

"It should make you angry. If you don't throw this book across the room at least three times, there's something wrong with you," Grisham told the audience. "It was a frame-up from start to finish."

A young fan asked: "I've read all of your books and passed them on to lots of my friends as well. Perhaps you could tell me which one best defines you?"

"Well," Grisham huffed, "I wish your friends would buy their own."

With charm like that, America's welcome to him!

It's goodnight from Bubbles

Ronnie Corbett seems concerned that viewers of Ricky Gervais's Extras, who last week saw the 75-year-old snorting cocaine in a lavatory cubicle, will think his performance derives from the method school of acting.

Corbett made a point of telling an audience in Cheltenham, where he was promoting his autobiography And It's Goodnight from Him...

"No, no, we never resorted to drugs - or drink. My wife did say she thought it would be the wrong thing to do." (Extras, not cocaine.)

Corbett will next feature in Little Britain's Christmas special. I am wooed by Bubbles DeVere [Lucas, below right].

"She comes to my Spanish villa, eats my Ferrero Rocher, drinks my champagne and tries to do naughty things to me. It was fun."

No kidding

A blip in David Cameron's seduction of young voters. The BBC's Newsround and Newsnight programmes found two 12-year-old wannabe hacks, Christopher Duffy and Becky Philips, to interview Ming, Gordon and Dave at the party conferences.

"David Cameron was really nice," Duffy tells his local paper, the Greenock Telegraph, "but not as nice as the other two. Gordon Brown was a bit nicer.

"Ming Campbell was nice. But I thought he was a bit old."

Kids can be cruel.

Philips was harsher: "David Cameron was quite shallow and lectured us. He completely blanked out our parents. Overall, I wasn't impressed."

Sounds like these two would knife through the egos on the late-night party circuit ...

Trouble in Neverland

The promoters of Peter Pan in Scarlet - the sequel hitting bookshelves 102 years after J M Barrie's original play - got into a pickle during Thursday night's launch at Kensington Palace.

"Are there any copies available to buy?" I asked a press officer from Great Ormond Street Hospital (to which Barrie left the rights).

Press officer 1: "Yes, £12.99 inside. Or £5 on Amazon." Press officer 2: "Don't say that! Especially to the press. Think of the money we'll miss out on." Press officer 1: "Oh, good point. Er, you can't get them signed on Amazon!"

So if you do buy the book - which describes the return of Wendy and the Lost Boys to a "colder, more dangerous, more frightening" Neverland - then don't be a skinflint. Or they'll send round the ticking crocodile.