John Cusack. Exasperated John, as we call him round these parts; to quote the possibly-just-made-up-now riddle, if the character John Cusack’s playing isn’t looking completely bewildered at the situation he’s finding himself in, then was it really a John Cusack-starring film?

Anyway, there’s going to be a whole new chance for Cusack to get looking vexed, as the Seattle Times is reporting that he is to star in a film biopic of the controversial conservative radio show host Rush Limbaugh. There’ll be plenty of scope for looking surprised and generally out of his depth there, then, with Limbaugh over his 30 year career coming across as a bloody-minded and single-visioned man who must constantly be surprised when discovering that others have a different viewpoint from him. It’s an interesting role to take for Cusack, given that he is an outspoken liberal; he’ll be guided in the role by Betty Thomas who is coming in as director. She has plenty of experience in this genre, having directed the Howard Stern biopic Private Parts, which was released in 1997.

Cusack’s publicist has said that the film – going under the working title Rush – isn’t a straight-up biopic. They never are. “It’s a much broader story, about how he reinvented American talk radio over the last 30 years,” she said. We can see Cusack's frown lines creeping across his forehead already.