Television
Celebrity grill
Wendy Cope
In last Monday's Guardian a Tewkes- bury firm advertised for a Middleweight Writer with Heavyweight Potential. If they had meant it literally, I would have been a strong candidate for the job. Elizabeth Taylor, these days, is a Lightweight Writer with Heavyweight Potential and the sub- ject of some of the most inspiring before- and-after pictures ever seen. For her appearance on Aspel and Company (ITV) to promote her book, she wore a tight- fitting purple dress with a wide black collar. It wasn't very pretty but it did show off to advantage both her figure and a whacking great diamond brooch that used to belong to the Duchess of Windsor.
At the beginning of the programme Michael Aspel announced that he had been a fan of Miss Taylor's ever since he wrote and asked for a signed photograph at the age of 14. This long-standing admiration didn't prevent him from getting straight down to the nitty-gritty with charmless directness. How much had she weighed? Of all the unkind remarks that had been made about her, which was the most hurtful? 'Don't answer,' I said, but she did. It occurred to me, as it has before, that the celebrity interview is evolving into a kind of public torture, inflicted on the successful out of a need for revenge. Most people I've discussed this with think that if someone agrees to be on television they are asking for it and anything goes. I can't concur with this view and I have an uneasy feeling that women interviewees get the worst of it. There they are, all dressed up and vulnerable, and here is a man asking questions that would make most people burst into tears. Michael Aspel asked some very probing questions about Miss Taylor's feelings for Richard Burton. They made me wince but she dealt with them extreme- ly well, even managing some witty answers. Presumably she is used to it by now and goes through the routine on automatic pilot. But there was no warmth whatever in the way she looked at her self-proclaimed admirer.
Our chat shows, of course, have been greatly influenced by the American exam- ple. Happily the same is not true of our religious programmes, though not, it seems, for want of trying on the part of the evangelicals. Their attempts to obtain time on the airwaves were the subject of an excellent Everyman (BBC 1) entitled 'Tell us the Good News'. The good news, from my point of view, is that the evos are not getting anywhere. We were treated to a delicious encounter between John Whale, head of religious television at the BBC, and Jim Woolsey, marketing man for the American evangelist Jimmy Swaggart.
Woolsey had sold his show in 148 coun- tries, including China. As he spun his smooth line in Christian sales talk, John Whale's face was a picture, polite but sublimely unworried by the suggestion that the BBC, in refusing to buy the Jimmy Swaggart telecast, is saying to God that the Gospel isn't very important. Their discussion was intercut with ex- cerpts from a promotional video, in which Swaggart strutted about with a mic- rophone, waving his finger and shouting about being washed in the blood. British evangelists, too, are making videos in the hope of persuading the networks to show `more explicit Christian television'. In a pilot called The Once a Week Show, a man was seen struggling out of a strait-jacket. And you can guess what the point of that was: 'I've discovered as a Christian that Jesus can set me free.'
The Channel Tunnel offers the prospect of a different kind of freedom — to jump in one's car and travel to the Continent quickly and without having to book in advance. Underground to Europe (BBC 2) gave a balanced account of the advantages and drawbacks of the project and suc- ceeded in making the boring interesting. The trouble with a tunnel is that it is just as frightening, in its way, as the idea of going on an aeroplane. Rabies, claustrophobia, leaks, collapse, the IRA and fires were among the concerns expressed by contribu- tors to the programme. Perhaps, after all, it would be best to leave the car behind and have the usual gin and Marzine anaesthetic before the journey. That decision won't have to be made until 1993, but thinking about it reminds me that, however many million pounds they spend, living on an island will still be a drag.
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