For months now, my younger sister has been selling off my late father's DVD collection with me - I set up the sales on Amazon or eBay and she does the to-ing and fro-ing. It's a big collection and it's taking time, so we've seen something happen several times. It happened again this weekend.
The John Lennon effect.
My wife told me while eating our tea last night that Jean Simmons had died. After I checked that she meant the actress and not the bloke above on the left - easy mistake to make and all that - the penny dropped. A copy of Olivier's Hamlet, where she plays Ophelia, had been on sale for weeks, but it sold that very afternoon. I shifted a Pretty In Pink within 24 hours of John Hughes dying. Polanski films did well after the long arm of the law finally caught up with the dirty old bugger.
I name it after the ex-Beatle, because of the way I remember the UK singles chart filling up with Lennon's solo singles after he was killed. If it happened just once I'd shrug my shoulders and say "it's just coincidence", but there's a pattern. Do you go out and buy a film or an album, just because the people involved are in the news? I can't say I've ever done that.
