Congratulations then to Nicholas Caradoc Hoult, the talented young British actor who's landed the role of Hank McCoy in the forthcoming Muppet Babies version of the X Men being worked on by Robert Vaughn's kid and Jonathan Ross' missus.

As with Andrew Garfield in the new Spider-Man reboot (up the arse), it's a cracking bit of casting. You probably first saw Hoult in About A Boy, where he was the precocious wee lad that bugs Hugh Grant, but it was in Skins, C4's borderline vacuous yet strangely compelling advert for pubescent genocide that cemented his current reputation. Playing a swaggering cock-about-town student in the first series, he ends up getting hit by a bus and left a crippled vegetable in series two.

He's been getting a bit of a rep for himself over in Hollywood too, with recent appearances in multi-award nominated A Single Man and the kill-me-now-it's-so-bad Greekathon Clash of the Titans 3D. But if you're going to see him in anything, get a copy of the BBC One drama Coming Down the Mountain he did a couple of years ago, about a lad jealous of his Downs Syndrome brother. He was nominated for the Rising Star award at the Baftas, but missed out to Twiglet pouter-in-chief Kristen Stewart.

In fact, the casting for Vaughn's X Men First Class is looking decidedly interesting. James McAvoy as Professor Jean-Luc Picard and Alice Eve as Emma Frost are interesting, not necessarily obvious picks, while reports at the weekend suggest Aaron Johnson - Kick-Ass in Vaughn and Goldman's likeable adaptation of Mark Miller's deeply cynical comic book - is playing Cyclops.

So, for those keeping score, that's Spidey, the X-Men and Hulk all getting recast from Marvel's pantheon at the moment. Thank goodness for those cast-iron contracts, eh Robert...?