Lorraine Kelly: Ageing beautifully, George Clooney would make a handsome president

George Clooney (Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images)

He’s a bright, witty man who likes to have a bit of fun with the media.

This week he declared he was thinking of retiring from the movie business because he was getting old and nobody really wanted to see people ageing on screen.

Obviously, he is talking nonsense, because he looks better than ever.

He’s even more handsome than when he first found fame as Dr Doug Ross in the TV series ER back in 1994.

And I reckon he had his tongue firmly in his cheek anyway, because he is only 54 years old and probably has his best acting roles ahead of him.

Being cast as the handsome lead is pretty boring really and his finest movies have been when he isn’t just playing the sex symbol.

He was really good as the evil criminal battling vampires in Quentin Tarantino’s From Dusk Till Dawn and hilarious in the Cohen Brothers’ comedy,
O Brother, Where Art Thou?

He’s currently working with them again on their latest movie, Hail, Caesar! and it was while he was promoting the film that he made the remarks about ageing.

Perhaps all of this is more to do with falling out of love with the movie industry.

George has always been politically active, campaigning to help the regime in Darfur and speaking out against atrocities.

Now that he is married to human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin, perhaps he feels that dressing up and pretending in front of the cameras is all rather silly.

There have been persistent rumours of George standing for high office and he didn’t hold back this week with his opinion of Donald Trump, calling his policies “idiotic”.

George is a kind, thoughtful man who clearly cares about the state of the world and wants to do something to help.

Not all of his movies are popcorn fodder and he has made some thought-provoking films such as Good Night And Good Luck and Michael Clayton.

I reckon he would be a charismatic and effective president and Amal would be an intelligent and hard-working first lady.

It certainly would be a prospect far preferable to the Trumps occupying the White House, which would be like all of us living in the bleakest of reality shows.

A great day out at my old Uni

IT was really good to be back at Napier University on Friday to officially open the new state-of-the-art broadcasting facilities there.

I attended Napier in 1977 where I learned skills to be a better journalist, and it’s incredible how technology has changed.

When I was a student we used typewriters. There were no mobile phones, the internet hadn’t been invented and there was no social media.

When I went on to work for TV-am in 1984, I had a cameraman, soundman and electrician.

These days TV journalists are expected to do all of these jobs themselves, as well as tweeting and posting for Facebook and Instagram.

It’s a different world now, and it’s so fast moving, you need as much training as possible, which is why Napier’s new facilities are so important.

My daughter Rosie is at Napier and it was good to see where she has been studying and meet her fellow students, including Finlay Matheson (that’s us in the picture).

It was a lovely day and I know the future of journalism is in safe hands.

US Presidential Election: What happened on ‘Super Tuesday’