Forget sales – stick to the script

eASTer treats this year include a creme egg baked in a ginger sponge and a Marmite-flavoured foil- wrapped egg.

However, one f amily butcher has egg- stended the range to a cadbury’s egg wrapped in chilli- spiced sausagemeat and fried.

The result is 1,000 calories, almost half your daily recommended intake. is it possible to have a minus number in your 5-a-day? RUSSELL Crowe has been on a charm offensive this week while promoting his new war film The Water Diviner, an earnest story about a grieving father searching for the remains of his sons on the killing fields of Gallipoli.

The film itself is a mass of contradictions: an honourable attempt to portray the Turkish side of that campaign, but harnessed to a soapy and unlikely love story.

Crowe is a paradoxical character. He can greet you with ‘Hello loser’, as he did during one of our early interviews, or he can be fascinating, funny good company.

Some have found him tetchy, a Robin Hood unable to distinguish between Nottingham and Ireland, and dangerous with a telephone; yet he’s sincerely dedicated to the business of acting.

This week he was scornful about actors prepared to supplement their miniscule Hollywood earnings with brand endorsement. ‘ We’re supposed to play different characters, we’re not supposed to lock ourselves and become an icon,’ he says.

He’s right: the marriage of movie star to product can be an uncomfortable partnership. Recently I found both George Clooney and Nicole Kidman lending their stardust to a line of bathroom tiles, as if there’s nothing an Oscar winner enjoys more than grouting. Scarlett Johansson stepped down as an Oxfam ambassador after endorsing a health drink company that operates in the occupied West Bank.

Her ad encouraged potential consumers to ‘set the bubbles free’. Oxfam had to explain to her that businesses operating in these settlements were far f rom

liberating.