Stardust set report part one

Nearly didn't make it off the plane this morning at Gatwick. First the jetway didn't work, then the stairs they brought over for us to get off the plane with didn't go up high enough. I was just starting to worry that we'd be stuck there forever, and that within the week we'd be forced to eat the other passengers, and we were all eyeing each other to see who'd be first for some kind of improvised galley cookpot when they got the jetway working and we got off, grateful not to have been reduced to cannibalism.

Steve the Stardust driver picked me up at Gatwick and drove me to Pinewood, where I was reunited with Holly (who's been working on the set all summer) and Mike (over here for a couple of weeks' holiday).

Tarquin, the associate producer, showed Mike and me around: I watched a ferret stampede this morning in the Witch's lair. Saw Joanna Scanlon (one of our three witches) in her nightmarishly convincing aged-crone prosthetics. Wandered over to the Inn on the Mountain Pass and saw Jason Flemyng, playing Lord Primus, in the bath, practising getting his throat cut. "I need the blood to pump out," said director Matthew Vaughn, and people ran around trying to figure out how to get the blood to pump and spurt properly. I passed the 007 stage where, appropriately enough, Casino Royale is filming. ("NO VISITORS ALLOWED UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES..." began the notice on the studio door, in large red letters.)

In five minutes I get to see the half-hour assemblage they did to show the crew what sort of film Stardust is. Will report back.