WHEN a film is set in Lancashire and is about a Lancashire character, who should take the lead role?

Why, an American, of course.

The fact that the screen play for The Rise And Fall Of Little Voice will be based on the stage play which has been running to rave reviews in London for seven months, and that a British star, Jane Horrocks, has made the lead role her own, is incidental.

Hollywood is king, and now an all-American cast will play the parts of a working-class Lancashire family.

Meryl Streep, who else, is to play the mother with heart-throb Brad Pitt in the lead male role.

But who is to play the part of the shy young girl called Little Voice who, with her gift of mimicry, lives life through the voices of the likes of Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe and Cilla Black?

Gwyneth Paltrow has been selected over the critically acclaimed Jane Horrocks.

Gwyneth who?

Seemingly she is a Hollywood starlet. The fact that she is Brad Pitt's girlfriend is purely coincidental.

Horrocks says the whole situation is so farcical you can only laugh about it.

Miss Paltrow, presumably, will be able to mimic Mesdames Garland and Monroe - but Cilla Black? And will she and Streep and Pitt be able to accurately enunciate our beloved Lanky.

We doubt it, but we bet we have a reet good laff for all the wrong reasons when they try.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.