G8 Summit

The three day G8 Summit kicks off today on Lake Toya on the island of Hokkaido, northern Japan. Doubtless there will be endless media coverage over what Kazuo Kodama, press secretary to Japan's foreign ministry euphemistically called the 'nexus of related issues'. For issues read, rising oil and food prices, financial crisis, climate change and nuclear proliferation. Monday will be dominated by discussions with African leaders focussing on what are arguably the central issues to this summit; poverty, starvation and the need to find a sustainable, long term solution to rising food prices. What caught my attention was not so much the fact that most of the leaders are suffering from extremely low ratings on the domestic front, so it is difficult to envisage what they can realistically pull out of a hat on Wednesday. No my attention was caught by an interview with Bill Nighy on the BBC. Better known as Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean or as a burnt out rock star in Love Actually and Still Crazy, Bill is a goodwill embassador for OXFAM and is in Japan to be a 'benign menace' (sic). The video link shows that celebrity 'endorsement' can be educated, articulate, lucid and intelligent instead of the usual dose of Ray Bans and hyperbole 'dude'.

Two of his more recent films include The Constant Gardner, by John Le Carré (dealing with the issue of large pharmaceutical companies using Africa as a test bed) and Girl in the Café, set during a G8 summit in which Bill plays the role of a treasury official, so there's some kind of poetry and a sense of coming full circle to see him in a field in Japan. Bill is a classically trained actor and it shows. He's intelligent, articulate and manages to 'deglamourise' the persona of the celebrity goodwill embassador and brush off a few clichés on the way. His measured emotion only serves to underline the chilling urgency of the situation whilst putting forward fairly simple, pragmatic ideas.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7491960.stm