Television
Abdication special
John Diamond
The best campaign of all was run by Mrs Emma Nicholson. 'It's a rather fasci- nating new game,' she told Channel 4 News on the night of the abdication. The game. as played so consummately by Mrs Nichol- son, was this:
1: Tease media on Thursday with the announcement that while you support Mrs Thatcher, your constituents might just persuade you to change your mind. 2: Return on Friday to say that you promise to tell the cameras what you're doing on Monday, so guaranteeing another turn in front of them after the weekend.
3: Announce on Monday that you're coming out for Heseltine, thus becoming the backbencher all the producers go for when they want the word from the back- bencher who has changed sides.
By the time the nominations were in for the second round Mrs Nicholson had man- aged, by my reckoning, eight goes in front of the camera and it can only be a matter of time before she sells the rights of her game to Waddingtons: Stab In The Back, a jolly board game for one to 372 players.
Once the announcement came it was all rather anticlimactic. The BBC went for the catch-all 'Maggie Under Bus' contingency plan and ran what seemed to be straight obituary footage with Margaret looking about 35 and Denis looking sober; ITV tried some mild political commentary. Either way I tallied the in memoriam content as: 1973 'There will never be a woman prime minister in my life-time' footage: seven times; 1974 winter of dis- content black plastic bags and unfilled graves montage: eight times; 1979 No 10 Francis of Assisi speech: ten times; 1983 `Rejoice! Rejoice!' message: five times; 1981 party conference 'This lady's not for turning' speech: nine times; sundry pic- tures of yuppies popping champagne, youngsters dossing in cardboard boxes, shirt-sleeved brokers frowning at flickering City computer screens, Arthur Scargill looking mock-noble at the head of a column of pitmen, memorial plaque at Grantham High School (weeping sixth- former: 'We all look up to her — she's our role model'), Argentinian battleship sink-
ing: 187 times.
None of which explained quite why the abdication had taken place, but then by Sunday when the heavyweight political shows were putting the three prime ministers-in-waiting through their paces, it didn't really matter very much.
`The day when politics is completely dominated by images is the day when it goes completely downhill,' Douglas Hurd told Jonathan Dimbleby, which given that he'd spent the previous five minutes trying to create the unlikely image of himself as a horny-handed son of toil CI had to plant the potatoes 15 inches apart at ninepence a day') rang just a little hollow. While Walden did his standard impression of Uncle Brian the Statesman's Chum, Dimb- leby spent his time putting down a pettish marker for the prime ministerial interviews to come.
The result was less than illuminating. All three agreed that the other two were really terribly capable chaps who might well do the job just as well as the interviewee himself would. Pressed (or, in Walden's case, massaged with sweet-smelling oil), John Major said that the campaign was about choice, Michael Heseltine that it was about getting the poll tax right and Doug- las Hurd that he was sure he'd get a good novel out of it all some day. House of Cards Revisited, perhaps?.
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