TELEVISION and RADIO THE problems of presenting genuine talks on
television are many. Sometimes, by simple treatment, they are not so much overcome as .cut through—we have not forgotten Algernon Blackwood. At other times they seem to overwhelm the speaker, the producer, and us viewers. There were two very different examples of television talk last week.
Lord Beaverbrook was surely talking with the utmost sincerity in his recent 'Speaking Personally,' but the trick tech- nicians did their best to make it appear that he was not. His personality should have been powerful enough tp impinge upon us without contrivance, yet every device of film-plus-television was used to dress up his reduced fifteen minute apologia pro vita sua to make it seem convincingly casual, with, of course, precisely the opposite effect. He came into his library and on to our screens with the question "I'm not late, am I? No, I never am" (as if he would have been for so carefully rehearsed an occasion!) and was then moved, rather than moved about his room while he talked about his life and lifework, his progress being inter- rupted by eye-easing and time-disposing shots of chairs on which famous men had sat and so on. Art could not conceal artifice, however, for it certainly seemed from his unwontedly lowered eyes that Lord Beaver- brook was consulting notes. Whether he did or not one got the impression that someone had had instructions to 'pep the old man up' while making it easy for him— a thing which no one on the staff of his own newspapers presumably would dare to do. Churchill, for whom Beaverbrook expressed so obviously .heartfelt an admiration, would never have allowed himself to have been 'produced' in this way: he would have given himself directly to us without frills. It was a pity, because the real Beaverbrook is someone about whom the public has a lively curiosity. It should have been allowed to enjoy or suffer (as only television could allow it to do) the shock of his personality neat.
In contrast, there was last week an astonishing flow of eloquence fiom, of all people, two Lowland Scots on the top of the Forth Bridge. It is true that no one would have been likely to have suffered over- production on such windy heights, but they might have been tongue-tied. They were not. Their perennial task is to paint the bridge from out to end; it seemed that their tongues had caught from their hands the gift of ceaseless activity. But it was no mere gabble; racy, shrewd, humorous, with the true tang of the Lothians, it was like something out of Scott or Stevenson. It was always difficult to find good ,natural broadcasters from the Lowlands of Scotland in the days of sound. Is it possible that television has broken some inhibiting chains? At any rate, it is to be hoped that the BBC will not forget these two men when they want the true voice of Lowland Scotland again, and not the mere guff of music-hall or pulpit blether.
There have been complaints South of the Border that they were sometimes incompre- hensible. Maybe, but that is what we must all make allowances for so long as there is only one television wavelength in these islands. We too sometimes find it difficult to follow your Cockney comedians and some of the delightful in-town-tonight type of
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