Television
Some fiddles
Jeffrey Bernard
Menuhin (BBC2) was a sixtieth birthday celebration for the great fiddle player which took the form of a chat between the master and David Attenborough. Old friends and members of his family appeared with their recollections on film, took us on excursions down smemory lane and we wound up with a semi-private performance of the Mozart G Major Concerto. Two things struck me. Firstly, all those stories about a dreadful childhood what with being locked up for hourg in an attic to force practice obviously weren't true; God knows where I heard them. His momma was alright. A bit pushy, but what else should you be with a prodigy? Secondly, what a very late developer our Yehudi was. He might have been giving concerts when he was knee high to a podium, but he didn't cross the street by himself until he was fifteen. I think it was fifteen. Anyway, that bit could have been enlarged upon.
The private life of a prodigy made public —well, a little more public—would have been fascinating. Girls. What about them? I mean it must help if you can play the Beethoven Violin Concerto. And what about pocket money? But he came over very well. For one thing he can cope with success and obviously did so a lot better than the likes of George Best and other recent comets. At the end of the programme, I thought the family, with Attenborough in their midst, was a bit much. When he came on to play the Mozart it was too much like the arrival of His Holiness, but that's a small point. After it was over, of course, I realised what it had all been like: a thinking man's This Is Your Life.
There are tremendous possibilities here, but if Attenborough is to compere the show he'll have to learn not to let his smile run away with him. I know it's terribly easy to grin like a fool when a great man says something shattering like, 'Good evening,' but comperes need to be somewhat cooler. For future BBC 2 'lives', Bragg springs to mind.
'Melvyn, when you were seven you were taken on a day trip to Boulogne and walking along the promenade you were accosted by an old man.'
Voice over: `Oui. I see thees leedle boy, so serious you know, and 'e tell me 'e want to write. I say to eem, but first you must learn to talk.'
'Good lord, it's Marcel .
'Yes, it's your old friend Marcel Proust. You thought he was dead, but the BBC have flown him over tonight just to be with you.'
Menuhin was followed, very aptly, by The Man Alive Report: On The Fiddle
(BBC2). I like this programme very much usually, but this one was far too tame. Most of the fiddles exposed on it were pettifogging. The journalist, talking about fiddles I understand, was very reticent I thought. The fiddles that concerned doing old age pensioners and the like out of a few coppers and fobbing them off with stale bread were certainly nasty, but they were still petty. What about the fiddles engineered by the people who run this country ? Some of them are gargantuan. Then there was the obligatory sociologist. They make me laugh, do sociologists. They're like door to door salesmen who've learnt a bit of technical college jargon. Dab hands at spotting broken homes—the clues are .a broken television set, a pool of blood on the carpet and an insane grandmother— they seem at a loss to know what to do with their gleanings. Perhaps The Man Alive Report might investigate these people.
Omnibus in Hollywood (BBC1), a repeat on Sam Goldwyn, was more interesting for the people who spoke about and knew Goldwyn than for the old rascal himself. He came over as having been not so funny and if people could say what they really felt on television then I suspect he would have come over as having been a fascinating but prize shit. Again I wondered why it is that Americans are so frightened of their bosses. Lillian Hellman and Howard Hawks were best, not scared, but still bags of grudging reverence. Robert Redford (BBC2) talking to Melvyn Bragg on Saturday has been kept from the press for fear that they'd write nothing but rubbish about the man. In the event, he was interesting and talked none, but I still find it hard to judge stars at the chat. I feel there's a tendency to overrate them if they say anything at all that isn't rubbish. After all those Hollywood people like Zsa-Zsa Gabor and those think men, one is almost amazed that they can talk sense at all. Dr Johnson hinted at it when he spoke about women's preaching. At least he didn't have a moan about being rich, handsome and successful: damn him.
QB VII (BBC 1) in two parts running in total for almost five hours, must have cost an awful lot of money. A pity some of it wasn't spent on a decent sound track. Ben Gazzara played a sort of Norman Mailer, Lee Remick played a credibility gap, Anthony Hopkins moved even nearer to becoming a `posh' award-winning actor and—surprise, surprise—Juliet Mills was best. Now that Leslie Caron has stopped dancing over the rooftops of Paris dressed like an Italian waiter, she too is much better. To look at as well. The first instalment of the saga was much the best. Gazzara was excellent as a 'cynical. successful, anti-semitic, Jewish script-writer and he had some nice lines in downbeat wit. You could understand how his orthodox father got on his tits which he shared with his upper-crust English wife, Juliet Mills. Then the whole business petered into the enormous American paperback it was in the first place. If, like me, you feel that some
novels go straight into giant paperback editions—sagas with sexy bits—then this was the epitome. The thing I can't bear about seeing writers being portrayed on the screen is that they're always bloody writing. So comfortably, too. All neat with sharpened pencils and lovely clean paper. It's quite sickening. Who couldn't write within spitting distance of their own swimming pool ?
Panorama (BBC 1) took a very good look at mercenaries. What I saw of them made me feel sick. In fact, not for the first time, words fail me. How sinister it is that so many psychopaths have sentimental attachments to their mothers. Mother-figure landladies, too. I hardly dare mention the rest of Panorama, The Jocelyn Stevens Show, which dealt with the troubles in Fleet Street, for fear of being subbed out of existence. But, as my companion of the moment said, it's all to do with the politics of envy. Good lord, not a mention of anything on the sell. supportingchannel this week. I wonder why?
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