Jamie Lee Curtis bursts into the room in a blaze of volcanic red, her three-piece velvet suit matched by her explosive energy. After a profuse apology for being late (she isn’t) comes more colour: “I wrap my Christmas gifts in old Financial Times and recycled ribbon.” It was Martha Stewart who turned her on to the pink paper, advising “it makes for a prettier presentation”.
And Curtis believes newspapers have a future beyond gift-wrapping. “I feel like we are leaning towards an analogue future. We are getting detached and that detachment is creating a weird isolation. And people are craving contact and connection which is analogue. You cannot have contact in a digital world . . . we’re missing the crucial thing that keeps us human.”
It’s a view in keeping with the warmly nostalgic film she is in London (Claridge’s to be precise) to promote. Ella McCay is a Disney comedy-drama set in 2008, a time when “we all still liked each other” (as narrator Julie Kavner, the voice of Marge Simpson, tells us in her comfortingly familiar rasp).