Woody Allen wants to move to London. He feels, according to a forthcoming biography, that his affair with his ex-lover's adopted teenage daughter didn't go down too well in America. Puritanical hostility to his relationship with Soon-yi, Mia Farrow's daughter, has translated into failure at the box office. Here in Britain, Woody hopes, the audience is sophisticated enough to distinguish between private mores and professional achievement.
He should have no fears. Indeed, he should hot foot it over here as soon as he can, because once he lands at Heathrow he will have a cheering hero's welcome. At least, this is the reception that greeted his countryman Mike Tyson.
I'm not sure the screaming posse who met Tyson at Heathrow displayed the "sophistication" of the woolly-minded Hampstead liberals who will no doubt welcome Woody among their own. Still, if not sophisticated, the Tyson groupies are fair - a great deal fairer than those aforementioned liberals who are gnashing their teeth at the prospect of the "beast", convicted of rape eight years ago, being allowed entry into their squeaky clean country (where homegrown rapists account for 18 reported rapes a day).
For his crime, the former world heavyweight champion was sentenced and served that sentence behind bars. He has been punished, therefore, and by the standards of most law-abiding nations, has paid his debt to society.
Mike Tyson is not a role model, and has never pretended to be. He has not claimed to be the voice of a generation or the conscience of black youth. His reputation rests exclusively on his packing a powerful punch - and this is his claim to entry into this country. Yet leader writers and opinion formers have poured contempt upon the Home Secretary's decision to allow Tyson into Britain; and Justice for Women, the pressure group, even made an unsuccessful bid to stop Tyson's fight against Julius Francis.
Justice for Women seems to ignore justice for men who've been duly punished. Tyson's crimes are abhorrent. But a criminal record should not brand you a criminal for ever. Allowing him entry is not condoning his behaviour, it is merely recognising that Mike Tyson is a world-class boxer who can pummel someone to a beef patty and give thousands of Britons a vicarious thrill for their money. (And millions of subscribers to Murdoch's Sky Sports, too, who will watch the event around the globe.)
Jack Straw knows that a big boxer brings in big money. He admits he is protecting ticket salesmen and small businesses in Manchester by allowing the fight to go on. But this is a slight oversight: Rupert Murdoch's anything-but-small business has a huge vested interest in the fight taking place.
If Straw was disingenuous, his opponents are snobs. The Britons who get a kick out of boxing's blood, sweat and gore extravaganza do not live near Hampstead Heath, watch Woody Allen films or have a PC bone in their body. Boxing is a working-class sport, the ring a working-class venue. Not the sort of night out the intelligentsia goes in for. Which will count against Tyson. A few years ago, when Gerard Depardieu, the ubiquitous French actor, admitted that he had once committed rape - for which he did not serve a sentence - the liberal intelligentsia did not keep away in droves from the French cinema, or try to put a stop to his breathless globe-trotting. Depardieu's past was presented as the artist's dark night of the soul; Tyson's past is being denounced as a bestial and unforgivable violation.
If Tyson had only excelled at a different sport - tennis, say, or fencing - his ratings with the squeamish, refined and woolly-minded liberals would have been a lot higher. And they're the fans you want, because they're the ones who rewrite their icons' history and whitewash their moral failings.
Woody, come on over; you'll be fine.
