Television
Tripe, no onions
Richard Ingrams
T have refrained hitherto from casting aspersions on the BBC's early evening newscasterette Miss Moira Stuart for fear of protests from all kinds of women's rights groups and ethnic minorities campaigners. However, after thinking about it I don't see why she should be allowed to get away with it just because she is a woman and black. I suppose I get more annoyed by the poor quality of newcasters just because the news bulletins are the only BBC programmes that I watch regularly and that I feel any interest in watching. But it never ceases to amaze me that they should be so bad and in par- ticular that the BBC seems to be incapable of finding presenters who are presentable. Moira Stuart is a most extraordinary- looking person with a doll-like expression and a strange nasal voice (my wife insists that she has some kind of optical defect as well, but I am not so far convinced of this). Then there is Michael Buerk who alternates with my bete noire, John Humphrys, on the nine o'clock bulletin. For all I know Buerk, like Moira, may be a perfectly nice person, but again he just doesn't look the part. He has a slit-eyed, shifty look reminding one of a copper's nark or a pirate on shore leave. Occasionally another woman called Frances Coverdale comes on. She has an unappeal- ing squeaky voice and looks like a rabbit. The only person who is moderately decent is Jan Leeming but she is only allowed on at weekends, it seems. Yet there must be lots of people around who are dying to read the news and would do it very well and look smart and pleasant. Why the BBC persists in employing its motley group of drones and deadbeats is an unfailing mystery.
According to the papers only half a million people now watch TV-AM, the much heralded Independent breakfast television service — good news for those of us who like to think that despite everything that has occurred the British remain a sensi- ble lot at heart. The poor ratings seem to have had their effect on the presenters, if appearances are anything to go by. Frostie, though, always looked pretty strange, and has done ever since he subjected his body to the punishing routine of flying backwards and forwards across the Atlantic two or three times a week. Nowadays he seems to find more and more difficulty in speaking. He has to jerk himself into action with vigorous arm movements and when the words finally come out they are indistinct and blurred. Sometimes his sentences just tail away into meaningless noises. It is hard to see how anyone in this dilapidated state could generate sexual chemistry — his own phrase — with anyone. But his partner An- na Ford is plainly not convinced and looks as if she is trying to keep the old boy as far
as possible at arm's length, in case he tries any of his chemical experiments. Anna herself is no great shakes. She looks gauche and spends a lot of time grinning at us in a rather vapid way. Her attempts to be jolly and relaxed all look very forced and sometimes the impromptus are just embar- rassing, 'If you know where Shergar is,' she announced on Tuesday after yet another item on the missing racehorse, 'give us a ring and we'll pass the message on.'
From the little I have seen of the broad- casts, the actual programme content is the purest variety of tripe. One day when I tun- ed in there was a discussion of pre-marital sex going on among the resident chemists, Kenneth Williams, Jeffrey Bernard's friend Irma Kurtz and an awful man called Philip Hodson who used to contribute to the Forum magazine and for all I know still does. Can you imagine anything you would less like to listen to at 8.30 in the morning? There seems to be a lot of nonsense too about slimming and keeping fit — surely a subject that has been done,to death over the last few years? The worst thing of all is the attempt to be funny, a feature called 'The World of Melanie Parker', which to me is utterly meaningless.
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