Orlando Bloom’s elf warning: ‘Don’t get on the wrong side of me’
Is there anything more adorable than an entertainer who denies their privilege in favour of playing the lifelong rough diamond? I always felt Guy Ritchie’s shtick was only enhanced when the Daily Mail published a picture of his mother’s house, and it was so big they had to print it over a double-page spread. (In another unappealing frontage issue, I am only called Marina Hyde because my real name was too long to fit across a single column in the Sun, where I started out.)
Anyhow, the latest to win hearts, Ritchie-style, is Lord of the Rings actor Orlando Bloom, who used an apppearance on Nick Grimshaw’s Radio 1 show to explain: “I’m still a pikey from Kent, boy.” It’s a slightly eccentric way for an alumnus of the King’s School, Canterbury – Britain’s oldest public school – to be talking, but do go on. “I’m still a pikey from Kent,” repeated Orlando. “You don’t want to get on the wrong side of me.”
Thank you, Legolas. However, eagle-eyed readers will have noticed that Orlando got on the wrong side of the National Gypsy-Traveller-Roma Council, which turns out not to be thrilled with his use of the term “pikey”. Orlando was quick to insist that he don’t mean no disrespect. “I’ve come from Kent,” he explained, “and I grew up with a lot of cool, interesting, freewheeling characters like that.” Well quite. Let’s hear no more from “characters like that”.
A chat-show riff is quite the best thing they’ve been in, and any one of them who disagrees is reminded that you don’t want to get on the wrong side of acting’s Orlando Bloom. He’ll have you, and you know it.
