Television
Old chestnuts
Richard Ingrams
-grasped, some reason I have never quite .11: grasped, TV over the Easter Holiday period is worse than at any other time at" ing the year. My indelible Easter memorY is of watching a film called Love Story about a young girl dying of cancer who kept 58Y- ing 'bullshit'. This year the Bank Holiday found me sneering at David Frost cotnner: ing a Royal Variety Spectacular (Thames) from the hideous new Barbican Arts Centre. For some time now Frostie, in MY view, has been suffering from irreversible brain damage caused by too much jet lag when he was young. This causes his mouth to hang open and makes his speech verY slow and slurred. Now, I noticed on MO" day, his eyes have begun to close up- The Barbican fare was standard stuff — Mike Yarwood doing his impression of Prine'. Charles, and a very old American come- dian, George Burns (86), telling unfunny jokes and singing an embarrassing sang about how he would like to be 18 agaill'! The BBC was even worse. The greatly over-rated composer Andrew Lloyd We', ber had been invited to host a 'chat show on BBC2. With open-neck shirt and a W.et, Cheshire cat grin, Lloyd Webber seemed dl at ease as he had every right to be. I find Mr Lloyd Webber's phenomenal success one °I the great mysteries of modern times. I have, listened to many of his tunes and never once heard one that I wanted to hear again. 9.13, this occasion he sat rather gawkily at W. edge of a grand piano, being showered Nv?til compliments by a group of musicians ID, eluding the opera singer Placido Domingo; `You are for me the Puccini of our daY. Webber replied by complimenting the guests on their own very wonderful achievements: 'You are gorgeous,' he told the unappealing American pop star Sui,..;
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Quatro, 'ere's only one word for it.' 1,'" pianist John Lill repeated his astonishTg claim that he is in close personal touch with Beethoven who gives him a few tips before performances. Parky at last bowed out on SaturdaY with a nostalgic look back. over 11 years of late night chat. He is off not to join Peter JaY si breakfast TV and so far shows no sign °` fulfilling his pledge given recently to Peter Alliss — that he would go back to Barnsley and start up a local newspaper. SaturdaY s hour-long Parkorama had a heavy eol- phasis on geriatric American film stars; many of them, like Bing Crosby, now dead' I could never see the point of showing an, 80-year-old Fred Astaire sitting on a stool singing I'm Putting on My Top Hat, other than to prove that the old boy is still alive. APart from the parade of Hollywood OAPs the programme was notable for showing once again that Parky has never been a very good interviewer. The first aim of any chat show host ought to be to provide an air of relaxation but even now after 11 years Parky looks tense and nervous. So the best moments were not the interviews but only When guests were called upon to do their PartY pieces. Robert Morley recited 1(ipling's 'If, Jacques Tati did a wonderful impression of a goal keeper in action, Larry Adler played Gershwin with Itzhak Perlman, but no one as a result of Parky's Prompting said anything much of interest. The Only moment that made me laugh was when Parky was savagely attacked by the Barnsley Emu who sank his beak into the tiarnsley man's leg and seemed unwilling to let go. Apparently this episode was a favourite with the viewers — I suppose because the angry bird personified our feel- ings of anger and aggression after 11 years of watching Parky. (It also reminded me of a dream I had recently of Queen Victoria b. eing attacked by Emu in this way and say- ing 'We are not emused.") All that said, I suspect that in a year's time when the BBC has hatched some even more awful chat show, we shall look back nostalgically at old Parky, who will seem in retrospect like a towering genius.
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