[Nurse57]

From the Daily Mash.


RITCHIE COULD BE FORCED TO RELY ON TALENT, SAY FRIENDS

BRIT-flick director Guy Ritchie will today begin a new chapter in his life based solely on his own talent.


Following his divorce from Madonna, showbiz insiders say Ritchie could be bankrupt within a year unless someone shows him how to make a proper film.

The director shot to fame in 1998 with the cockney gangster movie Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and has gone on to remake the film three more times.

He was applauded for the Irish language version, but the next two remakes were panned - although one generous critic did describe them as 'stinking, putrid buckets of reheated ****'.

In a rare departure from making the same thing over and over again he directed his wife in Swept Away and was subsequently chased by police across three continents and clubbed to within an inch of his life at the Berlin Film Festival.

But his greatest achievement so far is launching the career of Jason Statham who has since carved out a successful niche in America making films for the mentally handicapped.

Ritchie is currently filming the fifth 'Lock Stock' remake, this time set in Victorian London, in which the hero, Sherlock 'Big Mickey' Holmes, and his sidekick put together £100,000 to play three-card brag against 'Hatchet' Harry Lonsdale. Vinnie Jones will play Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyle.

Meanwhile Madonna is understood to be disappointed at they way her marriage to Ritchie has ended, telling friends she would have preferred to devour him, limb by limb, before tearing his heart out and throwing it to her crocodile.