Television
No regrets
Richard Ingrams
Q taying with friends in London during 1...)last week's train stoppage I had reason once more not to regret my decision to watch television in black and white. Like almost everyone else nowadays my friends have colour and it always comes as a nast,), shock when you see someone like Sandy Gall in all his purple glory with strange' unnatural-looking hair. Apart from that there are the commercials, many of wine' feature loving close-ups of food. The sigh of a fried egg or fruit pie in full living 01"t our is not a reassuring one late at night' though in black and white it is not quite s°, distasteful. My host, a man of traditions left-wing views, was very keen to watch a serial called Muck and Brass put out by the new Midlands company, Central TV. This features Mr Mel Smith, the fat man in Nat the Nine O'Clock News, as an unpleasant business tycoon in Birmingham getting the better of other unpleasant business tycoons' In last week's story he was busy buying 01)2 local football club in order to develop the site. The story was so complicated that despite my host's assurances that the sales( represented a brilliantly accurate picture °A' the capitalist system at work I remained unimpressed, not to say baffled. But it was when one of the many unpleasant businessmen was sick in the Gents after heavy lunch, producing what Barr? Humphries has graphically described as 3 technicolour yawn', that I thanked `What- ever gods there may be' for my flickering black and white set waiting for me at home' Talking of unpleasant businessmen brings me naturally to John Stonehouse, the guest of honour on Russell Harty's neW ly returned series of chat shows on 131:W2. The return of Harty makes me always aware of the impotence of the TV critic. Year after year I bombard him with insults and abuse. But the awful creep keeps CO - ing back for more. I could have told 01 that it was pointless having old Stonehouse on, as I was on a Tyne-Tees prograrno1e with him in November and all to no avail' Some people might think it wrong to have crooks like Stonehouse on television at an, but if they are prepared to acknowledge their wickedness and express the desire to make amends their comments may be in- teresting and valuable. It is exactly because most criminals like Stonehouse erect ridiculous alibis and blame other people for their downfall that makes them very boring people to listen to. But this does not stop the Hartys of this world getting all sanc- timonious and trying to extract a confession of guilt from Stonehouse on the air. Like Nixon confronted by the Grand Inquisitor Frostie, all he does is waffle away about ho`" things got on top of him and how he had this terrible nervous breakdown. Asked if he regretted anything, he said yes, he regret- ted the fact that he had been so much of an Idealist in his political career. I was glad that the audience laughed when he said he ,had Joined the SDP, though obviously he didn't mean it as a joke. The Bell has gone from bad to worse after its baffling opening. Last week we had Mims distasteful scenes, e.g. underwater Rims and men kissing one another, none of which seems to have much point except to excite the Gay Fraternity. After two episodes I still have very little idea of who these characters are, shut away in their peculiar religious community. They all seem t1). be the same — earnest public-school men with cardigans and pipes trying to come to grips with the meaning of life, not to say °ue. another. Like Stonehouse they are a b °rulg lot and none of them, not even the nun who appeared last week, seemed to be atall religious. This may be Miss Murdoch's point, but I suspect that on the contrary she is trying to tell us something about religion. Perhaps it isn't anything vet), profound after all.
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