Suckers to the Slaughter?
Commenting last week on the BBC's That Was The Week That Was, I assumed that the obliging people turning up to have the mickey removed in front of the cameras knew what they were in for. I now have some reason to believe that the BBC has not invariably been making the nature of its invitation perfectly clear. If this 'He calls it action-poetry.' is so, then the BBC has been misbehaving. Fan- tastic though it be, there are people who do not follow television and who are not familiar with the Meek Woollcott approach. I'm all for Auntie BBC getting with it, and the more up-to-date Woollcotts the better; but if Auntie herself has actually been leading lambs to the slaughter, then her behaviour has been distasteful—rather like that of the padre who earns the troops' contempt by cultivating a foul mouth. I gather that the BBC now takes the view that everybody (like the farmers last Saturday) ought to know by this time what it's all about. Not so: the supply of decent, useful, intelligent suckers is inexhaustible. (The farmers were well briefed in advance by the NFU and worked out their counter-attack with care.) Ordinary decency demands that Auntie should spell out the rules of her new game to volunteer stooges in words of one syllable— when the invitations are first made, and not just before the performance.
STARBUCK
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