Tonight, thanks to a generous gift from E (thank you!), we watched George Clooney’s 2002 directorial debut, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, a biographical spy thriller based on the real life claims of American game show producer Chuck Barris. In one life, the public life, Barris, played by Sam Rockwell, is in the front wave of the new 1960s television programmes that based themselves on audience participation and mass voyeurism. He staggers from success to success and from priapic conquest to conquest. In another, parallel, life, he is a CIA assassin who carries out his hits whilst on mission for his first life. Drew Barrymore suffers as the frequently betrayed but patiently waiting true love back home, and Julia Roberts as the Mata Hari femme fatale figure dominating his other life. There is more than one autobiographical aspect to the film, in which the real Chuck Barris was deeply involved, for Clooney’s own father had a TV game show and the young Clooney grew up with cue cards and intermission acts. The film, which bombed at the box office, was highly rated by the critics and is well worth watching. Anybody who has known sufferers of Münchausen syndrome will know where this film is coming from.