Unsmiling Kremlin boss plays it tough

Dmitry Medvedev is 42 and has been in office as Russia’s president for only two months, yet in interviews last week he calmly described himself as a man of “colossal experience” compared with the two American presidential candidates.

Short, brisk and unsmiling, Medvedev spoke to foreign newspapers including the International Herald Tribune before the G8 meeting in Japan starting tomorrow. In a gracious put-down, Medvedev said he “sympathised” with Barack Obama and John McCain. “It often happens that a person is elected president who has, let’s say, serious experience in Congress or the House of Representatives but doesn’t know how the executive branch works,” he was quoted as saying in The Guardian. “Of course you can learn. Why do I say this? Because for the last few years I’ve worked in the executive branch in the presidential hierarchy and this has given me colossal experience.”

Medvedev, who trained as a lawyer, was elected president in May in a landslide. He favours the same uniform of Hugo Boss suits and black polo necks as Vladimir Putin, his mentor, whose campaign he ran in 2000.

What did he make of McCain’s remark that Russia’s poor human rights record warranted it being thrown out of the G8? “Not serious,” he replied. With its economy in a depression the US would have to “conduct a pragmatic policy at home and abroad” to succeed.

He also used the economic downturn to justify a larger role for Russia in a world economic system that, he argued, still relied too heavily on the dollar.

Asked about his enemies Medvedev said, “I am positive that a number of politicians and part of the population is not quite happy with the configuration of power . . . But this is what is called democracy . . . It would be ridiculous to name the destructive forces one by one. I am not an adherent of conspiracy theories. In real life, everything is so much simpler, if not banal.” Splitting image as Meryl does ‘jaunty’

Best known for heavyweight roles Meryl Streep is finally doing “jaunty”. Streep, 59 last month, has cast aside her slightly severe image to belt out Abba songs, dance and even do the splits as Donna in the film Mamma Mia! “I keep getting asked about the scene with the splits,” she said. “They ask, was there a body double or was it CGI? Of course! They grafted my face onto Olga Korbut’s body.” Streep revealed that she first saw the Mamma Mia! musical just after 9/11 with her youngest child Louisa and some of Louisa’s friends. “They were sad all the time,” she told The Guardian, “then Dancing Queen started up. And for the rest of the show they were dancing on the chairs.”

Fiona Bruce tells of assault ordeal According to the television presenter Fiona Bruce most British women have had “some unwanted sexual encounter: a groper on the Tube, or a flasher”. Launching Savvy! a security guide for young women, Bruce, 44, revealed that she had been assaulted in her twenties. Her attacker, just 5ft tall and wearing a parka with the hood pulled up, grabbed her from behind and put his hand between her legs. “I was utterly paralysed,” she told the Daily Mail. After he had run off she realised “that I could probably overpower this guy, he looked like a real wimp. I remembered my self-defence training and thought this would be the time to use it. But I couldn’t. I was too frightened”.

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