A forty six-year-old man got married, and there was great ululation and joy, not just from his Ghanaian and Senegalese aunts, who were of course relieved that they could breathe again after all these years. But among huge swathes of global pop culture fans. Why, whence, wherefore and Idris who? Let me explain it all here. Idris Elba is, fundamentally, when you come down to it, an actor. A very very very good actor. Way too good to be James Bond which, let’s be honest with ourselves, is slumming for actors. Judi Dench and Halle Berry were punching below their weight in those films. Halle has an Oscar, Halle was in Losing Isaiah and Judi Dench has well, she’s Judi Dench, for crying out loud. Idris Elba was one of the stars of The Wire, which is the best TV show in history. The best TV show ever optically consumed in the history of the universe. From the moment the Lord said ‘Let there be light’ and the first photons began to bounce around, no TV show has transmitted any that are as good, or better, than those that comprise The Wire. The Wire is the ultimate experience in televisual broadcasting, viewing, and consequent writing-about and this is a scientific fact. They measured it with the Large Hadron Collider and established it as indisputable. There is nothing better. And Idris Elba was one of the best things in it. After rising to fame in that show, he performed the lead role in another TV show, called Luther. Now, Luther is the finest programme ever filmed and not since the first electronic circuit was closed has any machine created a better thing. It is the apex, the topmost point, the unsurpassed height of television programming. Luther is the best TV show in history. There is no retina that has ever relayed anything better to any brain lobe. He has also performed other roles, most of them excellently. The mandem act well. We refer to him as “the mandem” because he is a British gentleman. He has even been decorated for his talents with an OBE, which is an honour given to distinguish the better Britons from the ones who merely pay taxes and keep the law but otherwise just be there. We are not finished, by the way. Idris Elba is also a renowned DJ and rapper AND kickboxer. However, that is all just ‘by the way’. Most important thing to know about Idris and why his marriage is such a sensation is this. Mandem is handsome. The things I said about Luther and The Wire, there are people who say that about his face. He is a handsome man. Last year he was named People Magazine’s ‘Sexist Man Alive’, which sounds a lot more impressive than it actually is. You would assume that scientific research and painstaking analysis over the entire span of a year calibrated every single male human on the planet against stringent standards and determined that he was the highest scorer. But really, seven or so editors in New York sipped peppermint lattes for a few minutes then just flipped a coin. We obsess over such things, as pop culture cultists. The beauty of others doesn’t just intrigue us, it draws our gossipy, nosey side into overdrive. “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife,” according to an act in the British constitution, and that is why we have been wondering why this ‘adonis’ has remained a bachelor for so long. The real answer is, well, look around you. Most people who are single in their 40s are ‘damaged goods’. Idris has had two marriages before, one which spanned a paltry four months. He spent a quarter of 2006 married and then stopped. Whoa. Four months. I don’t know what he did, or what was done, but, whoa! One thing that is glaring in how absent it is, is Sabrina Dhorwe. It’s almost medieval how incidental she seems to be in so many discussions of the topic. It seems more “he married someone” than “they got married”, as if “he took unto himself a wife”. Sabrina Dhorwe is an entire, complete, human being in her own right, however, with an active career as a model and actress. She is 29. Idris was 30 when he got The Wire role and broke through to fame so, let’s see if this story will play out. If Mrs Elba will grow in fame and success and maybe one day the punters will be speaking of “that old geezer, Sabrina Dhorwhe’s husband”. You know. Like how we talk about that Jay-Z fellow.
