Dumbledore is gay

We've just learnt that the infamous Harry Potter headmaster of Hogwarts is gay.

Joanne "Jo" Murray née Rowling has said what any HP follower kinda knew, Albus Dumbledore, swings from the other side of the castle.

Rowling told a young fan at a recent book launch about his plans to find love, and explained that "Dumbledore is gay!"

Whilst I'm not a big fan of Harry Potter, certainly in terms of reading the monster book series, we all knew that Dumbledore had no "partner", you know, that relatively recent term to not state if someone has a girl/boyfriend.

I recall my mate David Farrar at Kiwiblog having a Lord of the Rings trilogy back-to-back screening one weekend - that's around 11 hours of film in one sitting - and David kept a checklist of what he called "more than friends". This is a moment in a scene when, usually the Hobbits, glanced at each other for that little bit to much to be considered just Hobbits, if you know what I mean.

He noted that the official count of the number of “more than friends” was:
The Fellowship of the Ring: 36
The Twin Towers: 17
The Return of the King: 25
TOTAL: 78

I have the full DVD box set, although there is now an updated extended super better edition available now, probably at half the price... you must look for the easter egg which is an interview of Elijiah Wood by one way video conference with Dominic Monaghan (Merry) pretending to be a German reporter. It's a classic.

The other one I love is the revised version of the Council of Elrond. The Council was a defining scene in the story where the posse was put together in the Fellowship to go return the Ring to Mt Doom. Anyway, the take off was filmed for the MTV Awards the year after the first movie was released. It's rather naughty and puts a whole new meaning on the word Lord of the Rings!

And since I'm scribing this on the West Coast of the South Island, not far from two of the locations, including the spectacular fires on the mountain tops in Return of the King, it's worth stating that this trilogy was one of the biggest movie projects ever undertaken, with a $320 million, the entire project took eight years. The films are the 14th, 7th and 2nd most successful of all time and won 17 Academy Awards.

There ya go, that's enough back rubbing for this morning.