Television
Feel it
Richard Ingrams
Ignoring my advice, television companies continue to turn political biography into soap opera. The latest person to be given the treatment is Nancy Astor, the first woman to be elected a member of parlia- ment. Nancy was a pretty dreadful old boot on the whole — bossy, opinionated and obsessively opposed to drink. Like her con- temporary Mrs Sidney Webb, she engaged in public works not so much with the aim of helping poor people but more in order to sort them out and arrange their lives in a manner which she deemed more ap- propriate for them. Her sons, who were similarly dominated, all grew up emotional cripples as a result. Nancy was also a Chris- tian Scientist and withheld medical aid from her nearest and dearest at crucial moments. In short, she was not a very attractive lady.
But, perhaps because she is thought to represent the spirit of emancipated womanhood, Nancy Astor has now been made the beautiful heroine of a television soap opera on the lines of Gone With the Wind. The story started off in the heart of old Virginia with the voice of NancY reciting her autobiography over conven- tional shots of stately porticoed mansions, grizzled Civil War veterans and faithful old negro servants. Nancy's father was revealed as a drawling moustachioed Southern gentleman playing poker and chewing cigars, a kind of Hollywood cliché familiar to moviegoers. Then, rather too suddenly, Mr Langhorne (for it is he) was whisked away from rags to riches, as a result of his dramatic ACAS-like intervention between two brawling black railroad workers. Top- pa's got a job!' cried the charming and, despite her poverty, beautifully dressed lit- tle Nancy to her tearful mother, and soon they were all living in a grand mansion sip- ping mint juleps on the veranda. No expense had been spared by the BBC in making all this look beautiful, but nothing could stop it from being deadly dull.
The reason is of course that like all these souped-up biographies it falls between the two stools of fact and fiction. Howard. Spring's Fame is the Spur, the BBC's Fri- day night serial, deals with the events of the Nancy Astor period — the rise of the Labour Party and the struggles of the suf- fragettes. Once again it is an idealised Pic- ture to a great extent, but because it is fic- tion written by a man of some imagination it is much more convincing even at its most bogus. I imagine it would appeal very much to Michael Foot, who appeared to be very moved by some ancient film of Keir Hardie and Co when it was shown to him on Panorama. Worzel was in his best waffling form and I think may even have broken his own record for the longest sentence ever
delivered on the air. I couldn't follow it through all its many subordinate clauses, but it ended triumphantly and conclusively with the words ...and that was the spirit of Bishops Stortford!'
Those of you who had the benefit of a classical education will remember that the ancient Romans used to ask each other questions expecting the answer yes, or alter- natively no, prefacing them with the words num or nonne as the need arose. Nowadays the BBC news reporters do the same thing, Only their questions expect the answer 'sick as a parrot', or alternatively 'over the Moon'. The stock question nowadays in any news situation is 'How did you feel when ...?' Last week one of the BBC's squeaky-voiced reporterettes, when sent to London Airport to cover the story of Mr I'Yke, the businessman recently released after several months in an Iranian prison, Put to his wife the following wonderful question. 'Mrs Pyke, how did you feel on being reunited with your husband?' A few days later there were no less than three of these questions in one BBC news bulletin. Sir Freddie Laker was asked 'How do you feel about the destruction of your airline?' Then some boy footballers in Reading Reading again, you note — were asked how they felt about their trip to America being cancelled because of the Laker collapse, and finally and most absurdly there was a Ming mother of whom it was asked by one of the morons, 'How did you feel when you heard that your baby had kidney failure?'
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