GEORGE CLOONEY is a master in the art of deflecting prying personal questions with a wry joke.

Ask him about his seemingly permanent bachelor status and, without skipping a beat, the 48-year-old announces: “I’m going to get married tonight . . . at some point.”

Since he first graced our screens in ER back in 1994, Clooney’s been deftly fielding questions about his latest love interest.

If you ask him a silly question, he’ll give you a silly answer.

So skilled is he now at the comic backhander that even the most innocuous of questions is likely to merit a joke response.

Take, for example, his latest film, the intriguingly-titled The Men Who Stare At Goats, a black comedy set in Iraq – his second comic-take-on-war film, after 1999’s Three Kings.

“I have done a couple of war satire films, Batman And Robin obviously being the first. Just wearing a rubber suit with nipples on it is a battle,” he says, barely suppressing a laugh.

Hoping for a serious response, he’s asked what drew him to star in and produce the project, along with long-time friend and the film’s director Grant Heslov.

“Well, I’ve known Grant since 1982 and he has some compromising photos of me, so I had no choice.”

On working with Ewan McGregor in the film, he deadpans: “After the restraining order, it was really quite hard to actually work with him.”

His dry sense of humour is well-documented, but up close it almost seems like a defence-mechanism. Perhaps after years of reading absurd stories about himself in the media, Clooney has given up trying to be serious with the press, apparently calculating the most absurd comment possible to out-manoeuvre the ever-hungry tabloids. Joking aside, “gorgeous George” is enjoying a lengthy spell in the UK spotlight thanks to the fact his three latest films have all been shown at the London Film Festival, where he appeared with his current girlfriend, Italian TV presenter Elizabeth Canalis, on his arm.