Showbiz: John Thaw resists Arnie's star power

John Thaw has revealed how he resisted the lure of a part alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in a Hollywood blockbuster because he prefers his starring roles on TV.

And the Inspector Morse star - soon to be seen in ITV comedy drama Buried Treasure - said the bright lights of Tinseltown held little attraction to him.

"I would sooner do leading parts on television than have 10 minutes - for 20 weeks' work - in a Hollywood so-called blockbuster," said Thaw, aged 59.

The star, whose Morse character was killed off last year, was offered the role of an "English baddie" in a Schwarzenegger film. But Thaw, who plays estate agent and widower Harry Jenkins in Buried Treasure, said he preferred telly.

"The films I'm offered are a 10-minute or 20-minute slot and it's going to take three times as long as a film for television. I wonder, why do I need to do that?" he said.

* Who's that new comedian doing stand-up on David Letterman's Late Show? Or, more specifically, that old comedian?

It's Jerry Seinfeld, who will tonight make his first television appearance doing his stand-up act since his Home Box Office special in August 1998.

Seinfeld has made 41 guest appearances on Letterman's show, most recently singing Sixteen Going on Seventeen from The Sound of Music with Seinfeld pal Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

* Dawn French will be hoping she doesn't make an ass of herself when she takes to the stage in a new production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

The comedienne, best known for her TV partnership with Jennifer Saunders, is playing Bottom in the new stage production of the play. In a twist on the original play, many of the male parts, including that of Bottom, will be played by women.

The play will also be set in a large Home Counties country house in the 1940s.

The new production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is directed by Matthew Francis, is to begin previews at London's Albery Theatre tomorrow night.

* Catherine Zeta-Jones has become a victim of a first-class scam by stamp hoaxers.

The 31-year-old Welsh actress was set to feature on a stamp in a little-known Russian republic, where officials were said to have fallen in love with her.

Unfortunately the remote Republic of Khakassia is not actually entitled to issue postage stamps, according to stamp expert Peter Jennings.

"These stamps are bogus - they have no postal validity and they do great harm to the study of stamp collecting," said Jennings, a Fellow of the Royal Philatelic Society London. "This is a scam to make money out of unsuspecting collectors worldwide who are tricked into buying them."

* Ribald comic star Adam Sandler is filming a secret movie in which he plays a struggling phone sex entrepreneur, trade paper Variety has reported.

The plot of the as yet unnamed $US25 million ($60.7 million) movie has Sandler trying to evade three Mafia thugs who've come to collect his debts.

At the same time he's trying to accumulate frequent flyer points from packets of puddings so he can fly to Hawaii to pursue a mysterious love interest, according to Variety.

* Quote: "Thankfully, I'm leaving the room as she's coming in. I mean, who wants to share the screen with a goddess? I know better than that" - Sex and the City star Sarah Jessica Parker on filming with Claudia Schiffer.