Television

Wogan

Alexander Chancellor

?There is a lot to be said for Terry

Wogan. Because his television chat shows have been so bad, I sometimes forget to say so. For one thing, although he is the most famous person in Britain, he does appear to be genuinely modest. This is not false modesty. He is fully aware of how famous he is. But he does seem to regard this extraordinary fame as a piece of good fortune which has come his way by chance. It is one of the secrets of his charm that he continues — after all this time, after all the attention that has been lavished upon him by the media, after all the public adoration he has enjoyed — to think of himself just as a little Irish boy mysterious- ly made good. In other words, he has not lost his freshness. He enjoys success and is not spoilt by it. This makes him unusual. It also makes him more and more popular. When will it stop? When will the bubble burst? Perhaps it will never burst — just get bigger and bigger until, as we all must one day, it is Terry who bursts. Maybe he has pulled the wool over my eyes. Maybe he is more conceited than I think. In which case, he is very clever about it. He wears very ordinary clothes, rather like my bank manager's. He does not, so far as I can see, do anything to make himself appear more attractive or interesting than he really is. But what is even more impressive, he makes it clear all the time that he regards himself as nothing more than an aberration, a person who owes everything to the perverted values of the broadcasting media.

On Monday he opened the first of his thrice-weekly chat shows on BBC1 — the chief attraction of the Corporation's much-

publicised 'New Look' — by wondering aloud why he should have been chosen for this task of resuscitation. Throughout the programme — in which he interviewed one television actress, two pop singers and a really rather good mimic called Rory Bremner (much funnier than Michael Yar- wood) — he continued to bang on about the BBC and its funny little ways. It is an accurate reflection of television's role in society that it regards itself as being of more interest to the public than anything else. Terry Wogan is fully aware of this. The high point of the Wogan programme was

thus a contrived interview with a member of the studio audience, Tory councillor Christine Smith of Sheffield, who had

gathered 3,000 signatures for a petition which she had sent to the Prime Minister demanding that the BBC should restore the American soap opera Dallas to the air. The BBC had taken the series off in an act of spite against Thames Television. This

was because Thames had broken some

mysterious television code by purchasing the next series of Dallas for more money

than the BBC had been prepared to offer.

After first teasing the Sheffield councillor by suggesting there were more important things for local government officials to do than worry about Dallas, Wogan sprang his bombshell. 'I can reveal, folks, the BBC have decided to change their minds. Dallas will be back on Wednesday 27 March.' The applause was deafening. The Daily Ex- press's television critic commented on Tuesday: 'Unquestionably it was the most spectacular launch of any new show I can ever remember. The question is: can he do it three times a week and remain in one piece?' Absurd though this question is, it

does draw attention to a real problem.

Wogan cannot spend three evenings a week posing as a little boy lost in the crazy world of television. He will have to do more. Exactly what else he can do without losing his audience is a matter, I am glad to say, for him. I did not survive to the end of the first episode of The Last Place on Earth, Cen-

tral Television's new six-part series about

Captain Scott and Amundsen. I will return to it only when they get to the Antarctic. Fund-raising by cardboard gentlemen in evening dress is not good material for television. The only dramatic element in the first episode was provided by Captain Scott's apparently demented wife (played by Susan Wooldridge) who was so ob- sessed by her desire to bear the son of a hero that during childbirth she started. shrieking 'Boy! Boy! Boy!' One could have done without that as well.