It is a mark of the difference between Australia’s commercial TV stations and the national broadcaster that at Easter, Channel 7 is showing The Fast and the Furious 2 (muscle mary Vin Diesel does street car races) the while the far more high-brow ABC is showing the 1956 movie, The 10 Commandments.

The Cecil B De Mille number was filmed partially just outside Cairo, starring Charles Heston as Moses and Yul Brynner as a hunky Pharaoh Ramses, with an abundance of muscles and lavish use of body oil.

The TV notes describe the movie as “the monumental dramatisation of the book of Exodus, [which] recreates the life of Moses from his infancy through to his deliverance of the Israelites”.Talk about big subject matter.

  

Anyway, Charles and Cecil stayed at the Mena House hotel, which still stands right beside the Pyramids, and Charles would ride his horse down from filming into the hotel’s afternoon cocktails on the lawn, all flowing beard and robes. 

With the discounts and incentives Egyptian tourism is currently offering to lure tourists back after the revolution, I reckon you’d be allowed to do a Charles and ride your pony down from the Pyramids into hotel drinkies, no worries. 

PS: I now note that Channel 7 IS actually showing the same movie, only starting at 11.30pm!