It was the biggest deal. Roll your eyes all you want but in a town that has already seen some of the biggest international stars in the world, that has already spent over a week getting whipped into a frenzy, last night was the pinnacle. Everything comes down after last night.

Star after star arrivals, and then of course George the ringmaster, leading in his band of silly boys, selling his own unmistakable brand of “ultra cool” – you know he’s full of himself and you buy into it anyway.

But here’s what sets George apart: when George does it, he does it right. He’s everywhere when he has a movie, he’s nowhere when he doesn’t, and when he’s on the carpet, when he’s rockin’ a tux, when he’s faced with a wall of photographers, when he runs back to the crowd and blesses them some more with his presence, you realise George Clooney always delivers. He lives up to that celebrity expectation – however illusory it may be – that the stars are more interesting than we are, that they are “special”, that they lead charmed lives… Now most of the time they fall far short, which is why the few that have “IT” are who they are and do what they do – George Clooney belongs in that uppermost echelon, you know? Where there’s only room for 3 or 4 others who absolutely never fail to make you squeal…but I have to tell you again – holy sh-t is he ever rakish. So much so that some of you have written to suggest a parallel between George and Matthew Perry, at the height of his Vicodin addiction when he was as thin as Paris Hilton.

And given Clooney’s much publicised battle with that spinal injury after shooting Syriana, there certainly is room for smutty tingling where that is concerned though after having seen him several times this week, other than the extreme thinnification, nothing else seems too out of the ordinary. More importantly, absolutely no gossip is filtering out about it at all.

Maybe it’s all the hot sex? All the hot sex with the generic younger blonde? Must be…

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