Television
A question of breeding
Simon Hoggart
The key moment in Who Wants To Be A Millionaire (ITV) this week came when Judith Keppel, described as a 'gardener from Fulham', in fact a cousin of Camilla Parker Bowles, faced the million-pound question. She needed to know to which English king Eleanor of Aquitaine had been married. She had little doubt. 'I saw it on her tomb in France in the summer,' she said crisply, before selecting the correct answer and brushing off Chris Tarrant's attempts to screw up the tension.
The event was a triumph for the British middle classes. All those people whose cul- tural horizons extend as far as the video shop are left flannelling on £16,000 by 'hi which civil war was the Battle of Naseby fought?'; 'Port Salut is a type of A. dessert, B. cheese, C. wine . ' and similar brain- teasers. Ms Keppel simply knew. She spends her holidays looking at tombs, so of course she was well aware that Eleanor had been married to Henry II. At one point Tarrant told her, 'You are so laid back!', but she wasn't. She knew the answer in the same way that she knows which cutler)/ goes where, and what clothes you wear for a memorial service. It's something she was raised to.
For the same reason she flatly refused to play along with his increasingly irritating catch phrases. He'd say, as he always does, `that yer final answer?' and tut we don't want to give you that'. She gave a polite lit- tle smile, as if responding to a servant's joke — wishing to be courteous but not wanting to offer encouragement. I thought the system usually weeded out well- informed people; for example, I and any other half-educated person would have answered all the questions the last half-mil- lion winner managed a fortnight ago, plus the million pound one they missed. But then most of us would never have got past the qualification round, having to arrange all of the singer Madonna's four real names in their correct order. And for the most part only thickos would risk the average 76p for the premium rate phone call you make in order to be considered for the show. Since more than 20 million people have applied so far, you'd be better off putting the money on a Yankee accumula- tor at the bookies.
Indeed, Millionaire wouldn't work at all if it were full of people like Ms Keppel. Mastermind succeeded because we were fascinated to watch people who knew much more than us. By contrast, Millionaire offers the viewers an image of themselves. It's a quiz show for people who don't know that a squab is a young pigeon or who mar- ried Eleanor of Aquitaine or, possibly, in which Italian city you might find the lean- ing tower of Pisa.
The makers of One Foot In The Grave (BBC 1) apparently regard Ms Keppel's win as a definite aberration, since she began her final run at the million quid (almost enough to buy a house in some parts of her native Fulham) just as Victor Meldrew was starting his last ever episode. It was a sad ending since, after a dazzling run, the writer, David Renwick, just couldn't quite pad out the 45 minutes. There were some excellent Meldrew moments — faced with a parcel wrapped in cellophane Houdini would have had trou- ble escaping from, he gripes, 'Oh good, that gives me just over an hour to open this packet of videos!' There was a fine, disas- trous reunion dinner with an appalling cabaret performing in front of Victor, the only guest to turn up. In the end the show just disappeared quietly up itself. But what a triumph for Mr Renwick. To have creat- ed it at all is a thunderous achievement; to do it on one's own is a triumph given to very few.
Rory Bremner's ambitious My Govern- ment and I (Channel 4) had, as always with Bremner, many richly satisfying elements. I loved the Queen giving her Prime Minis- ter a patronising lecture on economics. I thought Andrew Dunn was more like Alas- tair Campbell than Alastair Campbell dares to be these days. And the allegedly tasteless ghost of Princess Di was a won- derfully sharp slice through the reverential guff which still surrounds her. The problem was that the plot was so dementedly far- fetched that it left the realm of satire and became mere fantasy. The other new impressionist show now running, Stella Street (BBC 2), is in danger of becoming predictable. You really can't do Des Lynam and Patrick Moore along with Al Pacino. It looks naff and provincial. We'll know they've lost it if they add Peter Snow and the late Tommy Cooper to the roster.
A new channel, Artsworld, has just start- ed and you can watch it if you have digital TV. I wish it well. The programmes, gath- ered from around the world, are for the most part adventurous and challenging. My only anxiety will be that even cultured peo- ple who know who married Eleanor of Aquitaine don't, on returning home from work, want to flop in front of Brecht's Seven Deadly Sins, or the Michel Petrucciani Trio, or Norman Ackroyd — Artist at Work. They might just be tempted to sneak a look at Millionaire instead.
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