PANDORA.

(From The Independent)

Byline: SHOLTO BYRNES

Why Bluewater gives J G Ballard shopping rage

VOne of the country's most acclaimed novelists has called for the Bluewater Centre, in Kent, to be obliterated. In London Orbital, a film inspired by Iain Sinclair's book of the same title to be broadcast tonight on Channel 4, JG Ballard declares in conversation with Sinclair: "Iain, I want you to blow up Bluewater." Sinclair then verbally batters the hapless shopping centre, a pimple just south of the M25. It is, he says, "a zone where only the fake is truly authentic, the retail swamp on the borders of everything, grandiloquent and meaningless as one of Saddam Hussein's arches". Staff at the centre seem surprised by the vitriol. "I don't know if in the current climate inciting people to blow things up is such a good idea," says a spokesman. "Anyhow, what's all this about swamps? I thought we had some quite nice lakes."

VUMBERTO ECO stopped by in London at the weekend to promote his new book, Baudolino. Speaking to an audience in Primrose Hill, the novelist and academic admitted to mixed feelings about the film adaptation of his The Name of the Rose. "The problem was that the film was made too soon after the book was published, so a large number of people saw the film before they read the novel," he said. "I'd prefer a more Homeric approach where the film is not made for about 2,000 years after the publication of the book. I therefore told my agents to turn down all subsequent film offers, and they turned down... Stanley Kubrick." At this point Eco threw his hands over his face in anguish and hissed: "Aaiiiiii!"