RAIN STARTS PLAY

APART from Saturday, May 10 it seems as if we've had a couple of months' worth of pretty poor Saturdays weatherwise.

None more so than today when you wouldn't have wanted to be getting married at 2pm.

And on FA Cup day as well.

But, if every cloud has a silver lining, then cinemas really ought to have been cashing in.

When the weather is this bad in mid May, where better to be than in a darkened theatre joining the world of pure escapism?

Happy birthday today to Blue Velvet and Easy Rider star Dennis Hopper - still looking good at the age of 72 and with more than half a dozen projects currently on the go after a career spanning everything from Rebel Without a Cause to Apocalypse Now, Speed and Waterworld.

Shame he hasn't been more high profile though for so long.

Did you know... Dennis Hopper once came to the old Triangle Cinema at Aston University and the Mail has a picture of him there?

Photosales could probably sell you a copy if you asked to be put through via our switchboard - 0121 236 3366.

Now, of course, this cinema is just a car park... demolished like too many other useful buildings in Brum but that's another story (like my piece about Hall Green's Highfield House in today's Mail).