I’m discussing Claudia Andrei’s black and white cemetery photos of myself with Mr Scott, with a view to creating an appropriately stylish new DE website.

Comparing my ‘natural’ poses with those of silent movie stars, Mr Scott alerts me to a web site of fantastic movie posters from the 20s and 30s. Stunning inked renditions of wistful starlets and their slick leading men proposing to them in coin-like profiles.

In a particularly spooky two-tone affair for The Redeeming Sin, Dolores Costello in 1929 looks exactly the way her granddaughter Drew Barrymore looks in 2005.

From the poster, the movie looks like a formulaic melodrama churned out at the time, just as Ms Drew churns out formulaic fluff herself, with the exception of the astoundingly unique Donnie Darko.

Yet a poster for even the most disposable and predictable feature from the 20s still retains a certain class and sense of wonder lacking from the pedestrian counterparts of today. Perhaps in 80 years’ time, the posters for 50 First Dates and Never Been Kissed will take on a equally sophisticated and chic quality. And the bulk of Mr Adam Sandler’s work will finally make sense.

I’m horrified and yet secretly impressed by the way Dolores Costello’s career ended. Years of industrial-strength pioneering movie make-up made the skin on her cheeks literally rot away.