Poor old Joseph

On the bus this morning, desperately trying to avoid getting a bit frustrated with the 30 stone woman who was sitting beside me and trying to squash me into a space on the seat that an ant would find a bit of the snug side I spotted a poster for a big screen adaptation of the Nativity Story. I didn’t know the film was coming out, hadn’t seen any trailers, official soundtrack CDs or action figures although I have read the book and presume I know how it ends.

It amazed me that, if the poster could be trusted, I didn’t know anyone in the film at all. Where was the big star that would have people running to the box-office (as opposed to the big star that had the Magi running to Bethlehem)? It seemed a missed opportunity. This is, I am reliably informed, the Greatest Story Ever Told and you would think that Hollywood’s greatest and good would be queuing up for the chance to get in on the act.

So, to keep my mind from giving in to the temptation of seeing how many times I would have to hit the portly lady on the head with a rolled up copy of the Metro before her bonce sunk into her blubbery neck I proceeded to create a fantasy cast list for my own blockbuster Nativity epic.

For Joseph I immediately went for Alan Rickman. Rickman has a rather marvellous face that gravity seems to have pounced upon in a particularly spiteful moment and dragged down to the lower reaches of the earth. With this in mind he would be immensely qualified in playing a man who’s just discovered that his teenage virgin bride has a bun in the oven and claims, beyond belief, that the father is God almighty meaning that it would be incredibly difficult to go round and duff up the bounder. It’s not like giving Todd Baker a dry slap round the back of the youth club because he’s been seen messing around with your girl, Beverly Beckett. No, running into a jealous fury is considerably more difficult when the Unmoved Mover is the object of your bile.

Poor old Joe didn’t even get to name the kid. I’m sure he’d rather have used the name Jeremy or Tarquin and yet an Angel picked Jesus’ moniker. Hardly seems fair does it?

No-wonder Joseph looks so depressed on Eastern Orthodox iconography. He’s always sitting there in the corner of the Icon as everyone coos and ga-gas around the baby Jesus, head in his hand obviously sulking his little carpenter heart out. All he wanted was a teenage bride and a quite life and he got a stable, some shepherds who no-doubt smelt of sheep dung and a lifetime of being played by snotty seven year olds with tea-towels wrapped around their heads. If I were him I’d have a cob on too.
In fact, I started to feel so sorry for Joseph (as expertly played by Alan Rickman) that I forget a) about being sandwiched between a grimy bus wall and Hanham’s very own Jabba the Huttette and b) the rest of my fantasy cast. I had vaguely considered Keira Knightly as the virgin Mary but came to the conclusion that she is now so skinny she would be mistaken for one of the shepherd’s crooked staffs which would just be embarrassing.

So, here I raise a glass (or at least a cup of stewed BBC Magazine tea) to Joseph, the grumpiest man in the nativity. Bad luck old chap. At least you knew that while your young wife would spend eternity appearing to 14-year old peasant girls near the Pyrenees or making statues cry in stuffy chapels you could, I am sure, construct a mean set of shelves, which is more than I can to be honest.