The actor’s forthcoming memoir Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It? says the makers had honourable intentions but the elements ‘didn’t coalesce’

Dame Judi Dench has long made her feelings clear about Cats, the doomed 2019 adaptation of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. In an interview the year after release, she said she had so far declined to watch the movie – in which she played wise moggy Old Deuteronomy – and described the orange fur coat she had to wear as looking like “five foxes fucking on my back”.

In her forthcoming memoir, Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It? Dench reflects further on her involvement in the movie, which was universally panned and whose director, Tom Hooper, has not made a film since.

Unprecedented folly of misjudgment, bad timing and spectacular hubris is predicted to lose $245m. How did this happen?

The fanfare at Digger’s world premiere in London four weeks ago was literal. As the Prince and Princess of Wales took to the stage, their arrival was heralded by the band of the Irish guards’ fanfare team – bugles gleaming, epaulets shining, bearskin bonnets rippling under the lights.

Given the occasion, the band were not overdressed. Joining William (velvet tux) and Kate (chiffon gown, the late Diana’s earrings) to introduce the film was cinema’s longest-reigning monarch, Tom Cruise (Armani), along with a retinue including director Alejandro González Iñárritu and co-stars Sandra Hüller, Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Jesse Plemons and Michael Stuhlbarg. Loyal courtiers filled the front rows: Salma Hayek, Hannah Waddingham and no fewer than three Beckhams (David, Cruz and Romeo).