Television
Workmanlike
Jeffrey Bernard
hist occasionally I'd like my set to blow up. I Mean, what is the point of sitting there tutting and seething unable to turn the wretched thing off for fear of missing something deep and meaningful on the Lebanon, the 3.30 from Cheltenham, a glimpse of Cyd Charisse's legs, a performance from Michael Gambon, a left hook tom John H. Stracey or some further cbdueation from Melvyn 'What have you cen reading this week ?' Bragg? The stuff that one has to wade through to get ?ne's helping of pudding is really awful. saY 'has to wade through' since if you're writing a television column you can't only watch the château-bottled stuff like Hearts a" Minds (BBC 2), Tom and Jerry (BBC 1) and This Week (Thames). You have, Sometimes, to watch things like Hadleigh (Yorkshire Television) in case someone's
had a brainstorm of some kind and is actually thinking beyond what they're getting paid for being involved in.
Hadleigh is a horse-struck fascist with a credit account at Austin Reed surrounded weekly by actresses who started out as models and who should have stuck to modelling. (God knows how they get into Equity.) Superficially a gentleman, Hadleigh is deep down the sort of young executive who carries a bottle of Old Spice after-shave in his brief case, a french letter in his wallet and a copy of Yachting Monthly with him wherever he goes. What's good about the series is that it gives employment to all those old stalwarts like Eric Pohlmann who must be feeling the pinch now that the British film industry is being largely run by intellectual giants like Bryan Forbes.
Hadleigh is for people who want to fantasise about belonging to a Country Life readership elite. It just isn't a very good fantasy though.
It's a bit late to write about the British Screen Awards (Independent Television) but it did strike me as odd that hardly any writers get a mention. If something's good, the directors seem to get all the credit. They should have left a bit for Philip Mackie who wrote The Naked Civil Servant (Thames). Actors really ought to get out of the way as fast as they can once they've been handed their trophies and not linger to make speeches. It might mean that we wouldn't have a show but that would be better than the embarrassment of watching Lord Olivier now that he has ascended into the kingdom of heaven. Of course, years of applause are found to have some effect on a performer—look what a few months of it has already done to Diana Rigg—but it's very ucky. Rehearsing busily to join Lord Olivier on the right hand of God at some future date is Sir Richard Attenborough, a small, round, sincere man who looks like a middle-aged errand boy. John Mills must have done his nut watching it.
A large hunk of the past week's best talent has been sport. The BBC coverage of the National Hunt Festival at Cheltenham was above their usual high standard. It would be a tragedy if ever they let the London Weekend World of Sport team of John Rickman and his trilby in to a course like Cheltenham on Gold Cup or Champion Hurdle day. Richard Pitman gets better at his job, as does Julian Wilson, but almost as good as the racing are the interviews between races with jockeys and in particular those very verbal Irish ones. It's an extraordinary change from the usual on television to see people interviewed who actually know what they're talking about. Perhaps next year the BBC team might be able to explain how it is that priests from small Irish villages manage to to fly over for the three day meeting, stay at decent hotels and lay out an average of £20 per race. In the unlikely event that they might go through the three days with
out a winner, I make the whole junket cost roughly £600 and that barely includes enough for the whisky to make the going as soft as the Irish like it.
Saturday's world title fight between Stracey and Lewis came so soon after the real thing that you would have had to go out of your way to find out the result before seeing it. That made it much better. If Stracey was a racehorse, the form book would describe him as being 'workmanlike' and I mean it as a compliment. On this level I find boxing less revolting than I have in recent years but it reminded me of the hard work that has to go into it and I've decided against a comeback. When I say hard work I mean that to possess the strength and stamina just as necessary to a world champion as boxing ability and a hard dig you really need to sweat. Stracey is very tough indeed. He took a couple of hard punches from Lewis in the first round and from then on he knew the strength of him and was never going to lose.
I thought for a moment after the fight that Harry Carpenter, the Melvyn Bragg of boxing, was going to ask Stracey, 'Well, tell me John, who have you been fighting tonight ?' Always fascinating at the fights is to listen to the crowd. Of all sports fans the crowds at fights are easily the most revolting—it's their ignorance not their blood lust—and their advice on the lines of, 'Left hand John. Left hand. That's right, left hand,' is as ridiculous as a David Coleman remark during the Winter Olympics. It was during the ski jumping that Coleman reached an all-time high. It was peak excitement time. The goggled and crash-helmeted man came whistling down the ramp gathering speed as he went and then he took off and flew. My heart was in my mouth or somewhere and then the spell was broken as the jumper flew through the air. 'Yes, there he goes, the electrical fitter from Geneva.'
Although I'm not a golf freak I have sometimes watched International Pro-Celebrity Golf (BBC2) so as to avoid Warship (BBCI). The last one, the match between Oosterhuis and Weiskopf, was the best game because it was the best and there were no celebrities playing. They try ever so hard, the celebrities in this series. I was wondering whether it might not be a good idea to have a series of Pro-Celebrity Boxing. I'd very much like to see John Stracey v Bob Monkhouse and Ali v Sue Lawley, I think Lawley would probably move her head too quickly for Ali actually to nail her.
On Sunday we had Katharine Whitehorn Under Bow Bells (BBC 1) and then Joan Bakewell in The Light of Experience (BBC 2). We've already had Diana Rigg and Miss Raeburn in the pulpit and we've seen a lot of Jacky Gillot ; I begin to suspect that if there is a God he may well turn out to be a woman. Add Drabble to that lot, get Rippon to help and the next Messiah, whoever she may be, is going to have the most amazing bunch of apostles. Bragg will revise the epistles.
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