Age: 163.

Appearance: Handsome, brooding and dark-skinned, like Laurence Olivier.

Laurence Olivier wasn't dark-skinned. Maybe more like Ralph Fiennes – you know, swarthy.

Sorry, but they're both white guys, and both quite pasty with it. OK, but they both played Heathcliff in adaptations of Wuthering Heights. And Heathcliff was basically a black guy.

You have evidence for this? As a child, Heathcliff was plucked from the streets of Liverpool and taken in by Mr Earnshaw. His actual provenance is unknown, but in Brontë's 1847 novel the boy is variously described as being "dusky" or "a gipsy". One character says he looks like "a little Lascar, or an American or Spanish castaway".

Fascinating. What's a Lascar? It's a 19th-century term for an East Indian sailor.

Right. So he's dark-skinned but he has never been played by a dark-skinned actor. Until now, that is: a new adaptation directed by Andrea Arnold (who won an Oscar for Fish Tank) will star an unknown black actor called James Howson.

And about time, too. More to the point, Howson, in his early 20s, is about the right age for the young Heathcliff. Olivier, on the other hand, was 32 when he played the part. Timothy Dalton was 24, and Cliff Richard was 56.

Sorry, did you say Cliff Richard? Don't you remember the 1996 stage musical Heathcliff, that allowed Cliff to show us his dark side?

I must have blocked it out. Has anyone else ever made a shockingly inappropriate bid to portray themselves as Heathcliff? Gordon Brown likened himself to Heathcliff in a 2008 interview, perhaps forgetting that the brooding, passionate character grows up to be an embittered, vindictive bastard.

Do say: "I'm sure James Howson is a fine actor, as well as being the right colour."

Don't say: "At last someone is making an adaptation that is faithful to the spirit of this boring book for girls."

• This article was amended on 30 November 2010. The original said Timothy Dalton was 36 when he played Heathcliff. This has been corrected.