Television
Saturday at home
Clive Gammon
Saturday evenings I'm normally glad to concede the colour set to the children, requiring no more than the chance to pick up the news on the kitchen telly; but last week, through this contingency and that, I was far away from any available box from Monday to Friday, so that unaccustomedly I found myself committed to the corniest night of the week, suffering, moreover, from the trauma of Wales's defeat at Twickenham by a Mr J. West of Ireland. But we'll talk about that in a minute.
Something borrowed, something blue . . . I shied away from The Saturday Western (ITV) — being less than riveted by the news that it (The Texican) was "Audie Murphy's third last film . . . a Spanish-American co-production" — and from "high speed hilarity from those galloping gagsters," The Comedians (ITV). Something old? Why, yes, plenty of that, like Dixon of Dock Green (BBC 1) and The Black and White Minstrel Show (BBC 1). (To be perfectly honest, I can't recall seeing either of these for at least a decade. I suppose it isn't just a Radio Times joke? They do still go out?)
So what about something new? I was prepared to take a look at 2nd House (BBC 2) when my eye fell upon words and phrases like "Solzhenitsyn" and "Allende's Popular Unity Goyernment" and finally on "Sohgs by dissident composers and performers." Well, pretty crude tactics by Peter Simple, I thought, and he could have been subtler. I was therefore pushed back to TV Times which devoted its cover and lead story this week to the old warrior, Stanley Baker. Yorkshire Television, it said, was starring him in a new crime play, Who Killed Lamb? It was very bad.
The reason that I didn't manage to watch any telly this week until Saturday was that I was about my sporting occasions, first in Sweden for the European Indoor Athletics Championships and then at Cheltenham races. I mention this for a purpose. It must come just within the scope of this column (though rather topsy-turvily) to consider the way that television influences sport and there was no clearer example of this than at the Swedish meeting. There, in a magnificent stadium designed to seat 12,000 people in warmth and comfort, at a meeting where such magnificent athletes as Valery Borzov of Russia were appearing, fewer than half the seats were filled. The meet, though, was on television in twenty different countries. The telly blight was plain to see, every square inch of available flat space being covered in advertisements.
Massive telly coverage didn't seem to affect the Gold Cup meeting at Cheltenham, though, where they had 32,000 spectators nor did the televising of the England/Wales game at Twickenham do any harm to the gate there.
However it gives me the opportunity to speak my mind about the game. I've often had kind words for Bill McClaren, that shining light among sports commentators, but on Saturday afternoon he pussy-footed badly in not committing himself over the appalling refereeing of the Irishman from Cork who disallowed a try by J. J. Williams, one of the finest seen at Twickenham, and also glaringly failed to play the advantage rule on the one occasion when Wales had the English line at its mercy with two overlaps; calling them back and giving them a penalty; two actions which almost certainly gave Ireland the Championship. Mr West is clearly the latest Irish joke.
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