For the first time in weeks, he proved that he can actually come across in public as though he were actually human – with vulnerabilities, emotions and a certain amount of class too.The damage to the Cruise publicity machine is nevertheless palpable, and creating an atmosphere of disbelief that is rapidly extending to the rest of the celebrity culture. Cruise’s spokespeople were threatening some non-specified form of legal action yesterday, pushing Channel 4 into making a distinctly half-hearted apology and raising the question of whether Grand Classics will get away with squirting any more celebrities.Quite a bit of the media reaction argued that Cruise actually comported himself with considerable poise – chewing out the pranksters as ungrateful jerks (he was granting them an interview at the time the fake microphone shot water into his face) and wiping himself off before continuing his chit-chat with the crowd more or less unfazed. Granted, there may have been little that was noble or uplifting about the prank, perpetrated by they players behind an upcoming Channel 4 series, Grand Classics, in which all manner of celebrities from Paris Hilton to Sharon Osbourne get squirted with water, just for the fun of it.From the television producers’ point of view, it may in fact have been a colossal miscalculation. Everyone has to make a living, to pay the mortgage and feed their children.”The executive spoke these words before the water-squirting episode, which perhaps highlighted more than anything that went before that someone out there has less than total respect for Tom Cruise and the adoration fest he is conducting.

In exchange, she is expected to play the perfect partner and do the other things he asks, like convert to Scientology Perhaps they will get married. Perhaps they’ll even adopt a kid …”The entertainment press will go along with it because they don’t have a choice. Nobody will ask any questions they are not supposed to ask, because they know that would be the immediate end of their access to Tom Cruise, or any other Hollywood celebrity. “She is told she will be turned into a major star in the next five years. But the scepticism has never been far from the surface, ever since Cruise and Holmes announced they were an item in April.

And it blossomed into expressions of open disbelief and derision after Cruise’s now-notorious appearance on Oprah Winfrey’s chat show in May, in which he jumped up on the furniture, punched his fists in the air and declared his undying love for his new girlfriend. The whole thing looked like an amateur-hour audition in which an uncertain and inexperienced performer is plainly unaware of the degree to which he is over-acting.To the studio executives and private consultants who make their living crafting celebrity images, all the better to lure bottoms on to cinema seats, the problem was not that Cruise might be trying to posit the existence of a love affair that was really no more than a business arrangement (something he and his handlers have repeatedly, and vehemently, denied.) The problem was that by making the case so unconvincingly he risked ripping down the entire curtain concealing Hollywood’s frequently shameless publicity-making machinery.”You can easily imagine how the deal was set up,” one publicity executive at a major studio said. Who, after all, gets engaged on the spur of the moment and calls a press conference a mere two hours later to announce the news?It is, of course, possible that everything Cruise and co have been telling us is genuine, and all the rest no more than the warped product of cynical, hostile minds. His response was restrained but indignant: “Why would you do that That’s incredibly rude. You’re a jerk.”But though the star kept his cool, the stunt will have been heartily applauded by those who are beginning to tire of Cruise’s endless self-promotionIn Hollywood, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who believes the romance with Katie Holmes is anything but a sham designed to generate publicity for both of them (her summer blockbuster, Batman Begins, having just been released in the US a few weeks ahead of War of the Worlds.) The industry scuttlebutt on last Friday’s impromptu engagement is that it was merely Cruise and Holmes’ way of making an excessively sceptical world believe they really, really are in love. Cruise’s hosing by a prank television crew at the London premiere of War of The Worlds on Sunday was the latest of many indications in the past few weeks that the public is not buying the story.Cruise was doused in water from a fake microphone, brandished by a member of a camera team from Channel Four which was working on a new comedy programme. Could you buy it? Or is it altogether too slick, too packaged, too nauseatingly improbable?Well, the production of Tom Cruise: The Movie is in full swing and the response, at least so far, appears to be a resounding thumbs-down.

And let’s imagine that you, dear reader, are invited to pronounce on this script’s viability as it goes into production in the great global publicity marketplace. After the failure of his marriage to Nicole Kidman, he moves on to a euphonious four-year association with the Spanish actress Penelope Cruz. If Tom Cruise’s life was a movie scripted by publicists (and there are those convinced that it is) here is how the story would go: The world’s most successful male film star – dashing, sexy, energetic, focused, youthful, charming, and not nearly as short as all those cruel journalists keep insisting – continues to glide from one stellar project to another. It was probably a prop for the 24-hour play he did at the Old Vic on Sunday.”pandora independent.co.uk.

Bernal, who is currently in Blood Wedding at the Almeida, has been spotted on the streets of Islington with a unicycle.”On Saturday, as the other actors were leaving the theatre to catch buses and Tubes, Bernal emerged with a unicycle under his arm,” I’m told. “I hoped to see him ride off down Upper Street, but then a limo drew up and whisked him off in true movie-star style.”Says the theatre: “We’ve heard about this, but don’t think Gael actually rides a unicycle. The comment added to Tony Blair’s headaches at the EU summit.”Let’s hope he’s learnt a lesson,” says my man at Reuters. “Downing Street didn’t OK Mandelson’s last speech, and if he puts his foot in it again, they’ll be forced to deliver a formal slap-down.”* Val Kilmer has a push-bike; Ewan McGregor, a motorbike; but in Gael Garcia Bernal – pint-sized star of The Motorcycle Diaries – we have the West End’s most colourful proponent of pedal-power. In an interview to publicise its opening, Atkins, 70, pictured left, claimed that Hollywood star Colin Farrell (who is 28) had recently spent several hours in a hotel room attempting to seduce her.* For all her ability with the racket, defending Wimbledon champion, Maria Sharapova seems – for some reason – to occupy a truly phenomenal acreage on the pages of Britain’s newspapers.The Russian teenager has yet to set foot on court.