B y the time you read this, England and Australia will
be playing at Trent Bridge, and the news may be good. Or bad. Channel 4 reported record viewing figures for the first three Ashes Tests. Barely countable millions, it seems, tuned in at all times of day (and night, for the highlights are invariably on in the small hours) to watch the two sides slug it out in the first real contests for years. But what, I would like to know, about the record numbers of people like me, who become so emotionally involved that they can’t bear to watch the Ashes? The barely countable millions so agonised by the whole thing that the only possible solution to our patriotic misery is to switch the TV off and pretend to do something else?
Cricket pundits and former players naively represent the Ashes as a contest determined by the endeavour and skill of 22 competing athletes on the field of play. Those of us in the know, however, understand that the fates actually depend on our own individual viewing habits. The fall of wickets, for instance, is controlled entirely by the act of leaving the room; a watched Australian batsman (like the proverbial kettle) never gets out. It’s no good, of course, feigning a departure from the room, or strolling out for a merely frivolous reason: the cricketing gods can instantly see through any such subterfuge.
Imust confess before you all now that England’s failure to win the third (Old Trafford) Test was my fault. Unable to face watching the final day, I preferred to pace the room instead, muttering to myself about Vaughan’s declaration being fractionally too late. Occasionally I would allow myself a furtive spot-check on the score. Each time I checked another wicket had fallen. Six ... seven ... eight ... nine .... In the end, the desire to watch the final stages became unbearable. But as I surrendered to my urges, I knew in my heart that the tenth wicket was now doomed to stay intact. Just by watching, I had personally blown the whole thing.
Ihave, I hope, learned my lesson. I shall stay well away from the Trent Bridge Test coverage, lest I interfere with England’s chances again. I know that there are others like me, who also take their cricketing responsibilities seriously. Perhaps, if we can be counted, Channel 4 can illegitimately add us to their viewing figures, for a true measurement of the number of people hooked by the whole ridiculous business.
At the Edinburgh Festival I take in a selection of comedy acts. On our first day we go to see a young, Perriernominated female stand-up, followed by a much-praised double act mounted by two sisters. Both acts’ posters are littered with fourand five-star reviews: ‘The best character comedy I’ve seen. Victoria Wood and The League of Gentlemen couldn’t do better,’ gushes the Independent about the double act. In the event, the stand-up turns out to be the kind of person you’d run a mile from at a party: she harangues the audience in a screeching voice about foxhunting and abortion without once attempting to be funny on either subject. The two sisters prove to be even worse, gabbling witlessly about each others’ bum sizes like tipsy hairdressers. At no point is there anything technically identifiable as a joke. They are without exception the two worst comedy acts I have ever seen. Surely it can only be a matter of time before both of them get their own TV series.
As a nation, we are almost obsessed with youth: we want our TV stars, our rock stars and our film stars to be in their teens or early twenties. We cast around feverishly for the next big thing and pour scorn on the last big thing, making appalling compromises over quality in the process. In some respects this constant reinvention has been beneficial, for it has often cast the British as fashion leaders. But there are innumerable 30-plus actors, musicians and comedians who are finding that, however much they have improved with age, their commercial time has already been and gone. We are guilty of ignoring the very youngsters we previously insisted on lionising, the minute they learn how to do their job properly. What price the excellent but increasingly full-waisted Robert Newman or Stewart Lee for a new TV contract?
The continuing debate over what sort of Tory leader the nation requires next weekend SAS man David Davis? Nostalgia gargoyle Malcolm Rifkind? Flaxen-haired matinée idol Boris Johnson? — seems to boil down to two essential required qualities: a man-of-action image and a strong moral sense. It occurred to me that the hero of my recently published novel This Thing of Darkness — forgive the plug Commander Robert FitzRoy RN, would have been the ideal candidate had he been born in a different century. Good-looking, dashing, fearless, a brilliant officer, a scientific genius (he invented weatherforecasting), determined, on account of his Christian beliefs, to treat all men equally regardless of colour, and only the teensiest bit mad, he was also a lifelong Tory. What better qualifications could a man have?
Then I remembered what happened to the poor fellow. As governor of New Zealand he refused to sanction the illegal military destruction and removal from the land of the legitimate black inhabitants ‘for their own good’; vilified by the new popular tabloids, his career was destroyed. His weather-forecasting bureau was later closed down and the whole thing officially denounced as mumbo-jumbo by a Parliamentary Commission, its members in the pay of the fishing-fleet owners who would rather see sailors die than lose a day’s catch. He became the laughingstock of the metropolitan liberal elite, and took his own life as a result. Can we honestly say that something similar would not happen today to someone so naive? No, on second thoughts, what the Tory party needs is a media-savvy cynic. Boris, you’re back in.
Harry Thompson was the original producer of Have I Got News For You, Harry Enfield and Chums and The Ali G Show.
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