Television
Showmen
Richard Ingrams
Unlike many contemporaries I have never felt any urge whatever to go to America and this prejudice is always reinforced during Presidential campaigns, when we are shown on TV crowds of ecstatic American geriatrics waving flags and shouting. Anyone with the slightest delicacy of feeling must find these scenes distasteful. I was very interested in Henry Fairlic's article in the last Spectator in which he urged that we should try to ignore Edward Kennedy's habit of making a crude pass at every woman who moves into his sights. I agree that it may have little to do with his outlook on the Cambodian situation, but it does indicate a kind of vulgarity of spirit which is surely crucial to any assessment of the senator's character. Of all the vulgarity on show in Monday's Panorama devoted to the Democratic Party struggle, the Kennedy vulgarity was the most offensive. Even President Carter's family seemed dignified in comparison. The sight of Kennedy thrusting forward his wretched tranquillised wife, Joan, to assure the voters that she stands four square behind her husband was altogether repellent. The reporter Michael Cockerel] did right to focus on Chappaquiddick in his interview. Kennedy's attempt to iesemble a man enriched by suffering was again fairly sick-making. We all know that saying of clever Karl Marx about history repeating itself the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce. But he didn't'say anything about what happens the third time around.
I hope that any day now Michael Parkinson will announce his intention to pack it in and return to the folk from whence he came. He has already given us a glimpse of his plans when recently talking on the golf course to Michael Alliss, adding that he would like to start a little local newspaper somewhere up in t'North. Whatever bite Parky once had has altogether gone. I saw him on Saturday with the Frankenstein of Groote Schuur, Dr Christian Barnard. The interview began with Parky announcing that the once controversial heart transplant operation pioneered by Barnard is 'now an accepted part of surgical practice' — an obvious piece of nonsense in view of the fact 'that only one operation has been done in this country in the last ten years or so. Barnard, with a gruesome smirk, went on about how his aim was 'to give a patient a better life' when we all know that the family of his patient, Dr Blaiberg, were so appalled by the changes in his personality as a result of all the drugs he had to take that they wished he had been allowed to die in the first place. Not a word of this from Parky. Instead a whole lot of rubbish about the possibilities of a brain transplant. Perhaps he had himself in mind as a possible patient.
I think when Parky finally retires to Barnsley, his place should be taken by Derek Jamieson, Editor of the Daily Express. This colourful Cockney is wasting his time in Fleet Street as was evident yet again when he appeared on Saturday Night People (LWT). Derek was the life and soul of the gathering, brilliantly side stepping attempts to make him be rude about his boss Victor Mathews: `Blimey! 'E's two jumps ahead of me — and I'm not all that darft!' Otherwise Saturday Night People is just as dreadful as it ever was — partly I should imagine because no effort is put into it. The stories which are read off the autocue are pretty humdrum and the one about the Duchess of Argyll I found difficult to follow. It is interesting, too, how humbug keeps creeping in — Clive James in serious vein joined the chorus of those seeking to preserve the use of the Authorised Bible and the Cranmer book of Common Prayer in Church of England services. But I wonder when he last attended Matins.
Whether the departure of Reggie Dosanquet marks in the words of my colleague Auberon Waugh The end of an era' it is too soon to tell. With the ITV strike fresh in the memory I think myself the storm will soon subside. As I noted the strike showed how little people missed ITV when it was shut down and the same indifference will extend to Bosanquet. There will be a momentary sense of loss and very soon, after an interval during which I predict he will appear doing drinks commercials, the poor man will vanish into total oblivion.
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