ANOTHER VOICE
Further gloomy thoughts on the city of Liverpool
AUBERON WAUGH
Unfortunately, the match had not been started for more than three minutes when I fell into a deep sleep and snored through- out (as I later learned) like a giant pekinese. I had hoped to be able to comfort myself with the thought that if these people were good at nothing else, they were at least good at playing football. But the only impression I received before being overcome by the tedium of it all was that Merseysiders — whether supporters of Everton or Liverpool — are unusually ugly people with a quite extraordinary passion for shouting and singing in unison. Their happiest moments seem to be spent clap- ping their hands or jumping up and down together. We are sometimes told nowadays that this identifying of the individual with the group — call it community — is what social virtue, the law and the prophets not to say the entire Christian religion are all about. If so, I tend to spit on it, although I suppose it is better to behave like this than like the Yorkshire Ripper, who might provide an alternative pattern of be- haviour.
Television news showed coachloads of these noisy people on the way down, virtuously drinking lemonade and singing a song whose words were commendably sim- ple: 'Liverpool, Liverpool, Liverpool, Liverpool, Liverpool, Liverpool'— to the tune, significantly enough of `So be kind to your Four-Footed Friends'. No doubt some clever community psychologist thought it up for them.
This, then, was the acceptable face of Liverpool, and the important thing was that they all seemed happy. Some of them, I read, had to pay as much as £250 for their tickets, if they forgot to order them in time. This seems scandalous, but no doubt Social Security will find the money some- where. The important thing, as I say, is that they were all happy. Obviously, they enjoy watching football, too. Quite a few people, even in my own acquaintance, are interested in sport. Alan Watkins springs to mind, Geoffrey Wheatcroft may be another, and possibly Frank Johnson . . .
Even so, I cannot help querying the BBC's judgment in budgeting a record £20m for sports coverage this summer. It is well known that more people visit stately homes run by the National Trust every year than ever attend a football match. Almost the entire female sex and a sub- stantial proportion of males are bored stiff by sport. I would like to think there has been a conscious decision at the very top level of the BBC to promote sport as the opium of the lower classes, our protection against riot and revolution as belief in Mrs Thatcher's non-existent cuts grows and creates ever-widening ripples of resent- ment. But I rather fear it is the result of a simple, quantitative marketing error.
In the same way, Yorkshire Television, announcing the first all-night service in Britain, has decided to devote it exclusive- ly to pop music. This seems to me insane. No doubt people are different up there, and I would be quite prepared to accept that a slightly higher proportion of the population enjoys — or thinks it enjoys pop music, but even so this is a very small proportion and considerably smaller, I would guess, than the proportion which thinks it is interested in sport. Insomniacs tend to be older rather than younger. The obvious thing to show in the small hours is a programme of old movies, as the Amer- icans discovered at least 25 years ago. It is almost as if the BBC and Independent Broadcasting authority are so terrified to contemplate anything outside their re- ceived picture of lower class tastes that they are now striving to create the market they are pandering to. We shall see what the advertisers decide about this all-night
`It's got a girl on page 3.'
pop service. For as long as I can remem- ber, it has been accepted wisdom in film and television that no one ever lost money by under-estimating the public's intelli- gence. I should like to think that the Yorkshire experience will prove that even this is possible.
This myth of a majority preference --- for sport, pop music, lower class or region- al accents on radio and television, to name but a few — should be seen in the context about which I wrote last week, that all decisions, whether in government or televi- sion programming, are taken as the result of agitation by pressure groups. Last year I commented on how the anti-smokers had adopted a much harder line since discover- ing through some population survey of other, that non-smokers are now in the majority. This has seemed a wonderful opportunity to gang up against the smoking minority. Fewer and fewer smoking car- riages are provided on British Rail, some restaurants and cinemas now forbid smok- ing (I would happily subscribe to a Smok- ers' News magazine which warned us against these places) and there is talk of f government legislation against smoking 01 places of work. This week I learned that couples wishing to adopt a baby, who are already more or less disqualified if they are white, non-Catholic and over 35, face a further disqualification if they are smokers. Yet this non-smoking majority is a coin' paratively recent phenomenon, and might soon be over-turned, as more and more young people take to the weed. My 012 observation would suggest that about per cent of those in the 15-25 age group are now smokers. As always, it is the tiny minority of anti-smoking activists which calls the tune. But the great error is surely to suppose that there is any tune to be called. In the huge diversity of human tastes and preferences — frogs' leg-eaters and frog sentimentalists, fur coat wearers and animal activists, smokers and non" smokers, meat eaters and vegetarians we none of us belong in any meaningful sense to a majority, merely to a succession of minorities which finally reduces to a minority of one. None of which, I dare say, is true of the inhabitants of Merseyside, Tyneside, Wearside and large parts of Yorkshire. UP there, not to belong to the majority is quite simply not to exist. Oh, Liverpool, Liver- pool, LIVERPOO-OOL.
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