Corn time
• TELEVISION STUART HOOD
A couple of Saturdays ago I turned on my set to catch Tom Grattan's War, Yorkshire Tele- vision's children's serial, which—to judge by the way Donald Baverstock talked about child- ren's programmes some months ago—promised to be interesting. By some inexplicable quirk of the schedules what I stumbled on was a pro- gramme from Granada called Nice Time. It included such items as an interview with a
window-cleaner on his experiences as a voyeur (backed, naturally, by the George Formby lyric), victims of both sexes and all ages invited to eat a banana and sing at the same time, grown-up men soaping a doll that gave them a series of electric shocks, a parade of vicars —object: Spot the two that aren't genuine. The whole was held together by two trendy pre- senters whose patter was some of the corniest to be heard on the air for years.
-As an exercise in tasteless triviality Nice Time was challenged only by the David Frost Show which came hard on its heels. Here was Uncle David at Weston-super-Mare interviewing kiddywinks about their sand castles, doing a commentary on a donkey race, persuading ladies to compete in blowing up balloons, chat- ting up a Punch-and-Judy man, telling an old joke that must have been stale when he told it in that very same town at the beginning of his career years and years ago. The spontaneity of the occasion was considerably marred by the appearances of technicians at various points running about with the peculiar crouching gait of men under fire, firmly removing children who had gone into shot at the wrong time, furiously trying to keep Uncle David's leads from getting hopelessly snarled. It is a very long time since I have seen on the air, within the scope of a single programme, so much bogus affability, such utter condescension to other human beings. His patter rang as true as the farewell routine of an air-hostess on an economy flight. The only cheering aspect of the whole affair was that the children for the most part bore it all with a certain stubborn stoical dignity.
The next time I caught David Frost he had undergone a protean change and was in the midst of a long show-biz chat with Peter Sellers, Ted Ray and Sammy Davis, Jr. They had all been briefed about their party tricks. It was to be impersonations. Peter Sellers took off Sir Laurence beautifully. Ted Ray did his best. Sammy Davis, Jr, was coy but, when pressed, rendered Orson Welles in The Third Man delivering his crack about the Swiss and the cuckoo clock. Frost was in ecstasy. Everybody was delighted. No one apparently noticed that Sammy Davis, Jr, got the epigram—if that is the word for it—quite wrong. In this happy frame of mind the audience was carried over into a piece of community singing, led by Joseph Locke, who bounces as he sings 'Goodbye goodbye, it's time to say goodbye,' and agitates a handkerchief in a genteel version of l'adieu supreme des mouc:hoirs. This was either a de- liberate send-up or a hilarious piece of uncon- scious comedy. The trouble with the Frost Programme is that it is no longer possible to determine which is which.
His third avatar was as a serious interviewer dealing with Tariq Ali. Tariq Ali is lucid and gifted with considerable powers of repartee. He is also capable of conducting an intelligent political discussion. Frost persisted in dragging the level of the conversation down by injecting philistine comments masquerading as sturdy commonsense. He had brought along to sup- port him Marcus Lipton, who persisted in treating Tariq All like a naughty little boy and made the fury of the young radicals in- telligible to any open-minded viewer. Bernard Braine, MP, had been planted in the audience as a second line of defence. His brand of arro- gant paternalism did the cause of consensus politics no good at all. Violence was un-British; it was against our traditions; it did no good anyway. At this point Frost -stepped, down to join a little old lady -who described how, as a suffragette, she had committed arson up and down the land.- She had Tariq Ali applauding like mad. The question is whether Frost was aware what he was doing. Was it merely a coup de thecitre designed to give the programme a lift? Had anyone considered the political im- plications? Once again, there is no way of knowing.
Tom Grattan's War—I saw it last weekend —is a splendid and imaginative programme.
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