24 SEPTEMBER 1977, Page 29

Television

Copy-cat

Richard Ingrams

One of the depressing things about both channels is the way they feel obliged to ape one another's successes. If ITV comes up With a rough, tough horrible policeman in The Sweeney, the BBC has to follow suit. The right response would be to do the opposite and create an old-fashioned plod pedalltng round the countryside in search of adventure on a decrepit old bicycle. Instead of which in Target we get an exact facsimile of Detective Inspector Regan in Detective Inspector Hackett, living life in the same breathless spasms, never using a word when a grunt will suffice and when he does talk to colleagues or members of the criminal classes doing so in the same style as Regan, which one might describe as NeasdenChandler. As in The Sweeney, a recipe of swiftly-changing scenes, violence and soft porn is used to disguise the implausibility of the plot. Last week for good measure, we had boiling water being poured over a naked woman. However if you think Target is awful you should try watching the Pam Ayres Show on London Weekend. This terrible half-witted nonsense must represent some sort of Lowest Common Denominator. Pam Ayres, the Swan of Wantage, writes poems of the type that sometimes grace the pages of our parish magazine, the authors of which prefer wisely to remain anonymous. Now some silly telly producer has foolishly persuaded her to compere a half-hour show and cavort around in asinine sketches. There is also the token man with guitar and beard to provide musical interludes.

Never mind. The Muppets will soon be back, 'I know of no television-owning parent or child,' wrote the bearded Sunday Times tele-pundit Elkan Allan the other day, 'who will not be delighted to see the return of Blue Peter'. Well, all I can say is that he doesn't know me or my children. I'm not sure I don't even prefer Bruce Forsyth to those three desperately jolly comperes Lesley Judd, Peter Purves and John Noakes. To mark their return the Radio Times cover bore a most offensive and blasphemous photograph of the egregious Noakes crouching smugly beneath a statue of Christ. A nadir was reached last week when the retired Blue Peter bitch, an undistinguished though perfectly pleasant and well-behaved mongrel called Petra, was finally 'put to sleep' at the age of fifteen. Obituaries in the press revealed that Petra had been accustomed to receiving about 100,000 cards and presents on her birthday and had during her lifetime been introduced to Dame Margot Fonteyn, Ringo Starr, Princess Margaret and other members of the Royal Family. On the air solemn music for a departed dog was played, a memorial bronze statue was set up in a place of honour and the kiddies were invited to send in for a souvenir postcard and meanwhile to take comfort for the day when their pets' turn came to be put to sleep.

What Elkan Allan likes about Blue Peter is that it is guaranteed not to show children anything 'unsuitable'. I would have thought it was most unsuitable to engage in sentimentality of this kind. It is bad enough when nondescript humans are elevated into television personalities. When it happens to dogs it is all the more squirm-making. I would now ask all pet-lovers and Blue Peter fans to think twice before wasting hardearned pennies writing letters of protest about the above to the already hard-pressed editor of the Spectator.