Funny. I’d have thought that Annie Leibovitz would be worth a bob or two. But it appears not.

An art finance company that loaned celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz $24 million against the value of her entire collection and her properties has sued Leibovitz for violating the terms of the agreement.

In a lawsuit filed in New York State Supreme Court, Art Capital Group Inc asked a judge to compel Leibovitz to cooperate with the person assigned to selling her copyrights and organising the sale of her properties, so Leibovitz can pay back the loan.

Leibovitz (59), who has photographed everyone from Michelle Obama to Britain’s Queen Elizabeth and a heavily pregnant Demi Moore in the nude, approached Art Capital in June last year about her “dire financial condition,” the lawsuit said.

She initially obtained a $22 million loan from American Photography, which is held by Art Capital Group. Later that amount was increased to $24 million.

The breach of contract lawsuit accuses Leibovitz of “boldly deceptive conduct” and seeks to compel her to grant real estate agents access to homes in Manhattan and in Rhinebeck, New York, so they can be sold and the money used to repay the loan…

Two possible explanations: (a) that private jet was a step too far; (b) she was a client of Bernie Madoff.

Still, she can always pawn her Nikon D3s and that Hasselblad system.

Sadly, no.

“We hit it off right from the beginning. When he’s not arresting you, Sergeant Crowley is a really likable guy.”

Harvard Prof Henry Louis Gates, after being invited to the White House for a beer with the police officer who arrested him on suspicion of breaking into his own house.

[Source.]

En passant Obama’s original intervention in this fracas was uncharacteristically thoughtless. After all, for a guy who’s been trained as a lawyer to offer an opinion on a controversial encounter while at the same time saying that he didn’t know the facts was, well, idiotic.

Like Winston Churchill, I’m a firm believer in the efficacy of the afternoon nap. Turns out that I’m not that unusual — at least of the Pew Research Center can be believed.

On a typical day, a third of the adults (34%) in the United States take a nap.

Napping thrives among all demographic groups, but it’s more widespread among some than others, according to a Pew Research Center Social & Demographic Trends survey of a nationally representative sample of 1,488 adults.

More men than women report that they caught a little snooze in the past 24 hours — 38% vs. 31%. This gender gap occurs almost entirely among older adults. More than four-in-ten ( 41%) men ages 50 and older say they napped in the past day, compared with just 28% of women of the same age. Below the age of 50, men and women are about equally likely to say they napped in the past day (35% vs. 34%)…

Er, zzzzzzz…..

Or the need for an etiquette guide in the Premiership. Lovely column by Marina Hyde.

Then of course there is the recalibration necessitated by City’s becoming nouveau riche, as they make previous League arrivistes Chelsea look like a club that hasn’t had to buy its own furniture. And of even more pressing concern to those of us who insist on things being done properly are the new teams, those Premier League debutantes being presented at the court of the Big Four, and whose failure to know which knife to use to stab their manager in the back after a disastrous start would be excruciating in the extreme.

The solution is clear: the FA must produce a Premier League etiquette guide. Might I suggest a variation of the classic Frost Report sketch on class, which starred John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett – but which might with only a little effort be adapted as an instructional video starring Ferguson, Mark Hughes, and perhaps Burnley's Owen Coyle, wearing respectively the bowler hat, pork pie hat, and cloth cap.

Ferguson I look down on him [indicates Hughes] because I am a big club.

Hughes I look up to him [Ferguson] because he is a big club; but I look down on him [Coyle].

Coyle I know my place. I look up to them both. But I don't look up to him [Hughes] as much as I look up to him [Ferguson], because he has got innate breeding…

And so it goes on. Lovely stuff.

Thoughtful blog post by Bill Thomson after a week in Deepest Norfolk (which is a truly beautiful place, but a black hole for communications).

Finding myself intermittently online this week was a mild inconvenience for me, and I managed to get connected when I needed to so that urgent business could be dealt with. However slow, unreliable connections are a fact of life for millions of people in the UK, and most of the world’s internet-using population, and experiencing it again myself made me realise that the real benefits of the online revolution will only come when net access is seamless, pervasive and guaranteed…