Even the scrap paper are full of gold

The inner design of the [Burj al-Arab] hotel is full og [sic] gold, luxury and a ghastly sight. Whatever the huge pillar in the lobby, doorknob, tap, ashtray, hat-and-coat-hook, even the scrap paper are full of gold.

So that's the classy joint where Rupert Murdoch's former Muckraker General hunkered down for her well-earned break from the hard slog of serving up lashings of hot sleaze, hypocrisy and corruption for the edification and titillation of the Great British Public.

An artificial island, topped by a bling-encrusted, environmentally catastrophic monument to excess, built by exploited near-slaves, which generates more sewage than the local infrastructure can cope with.* With an epic backdrop like that, not to mention the Downton Abbey-style horsey hob-nobbing with the Chipping Norton Set, the story of Rebekah's journey** from ordinary schoolgirl in an ordinary comprehensive to manipulative movey-shakey media monster, looking down from her gilded cage on the crashing waves and desert below has "blockbuster" written all over it. Pure docudrama gold - pass the popcorn.



*Other opinions are available - as far as my seven-year-old son's concerned, because the Burj al-Arab stars in one of National Geographic's breathless, amazing-fact-filled, megastructure documentaries it must, by definition, be built of solid awesome. It's only strict policing of screen time that's prevented him from recreating the whole damn building in Minecraft.

 **It's a media cliché that that every "human interest" story is a "journey" of some sort, but in this case it's the real deal.