Pulling power
James Delingpole
E nglish constitutional monarchy is even I older than Magna Carta. According to David Starkey, it dates as far back as 1014, when Ethelred the Unready (which of course we all know from pub quizzes is actually a mistranslation of the Anglo-Saxon for illadvised) was invited back from exile to resume his English kingship — but on condition, as faithfully recorded in the Chronicle, that he agreed not to be such a tyrant.
And here's further evidence of how sophisticated and fabulous and ahead of their time the Anglo-Saxons were. In 1051, the forces of Edward the Confessor and the rebel earl Godwin of Wessex drew up plans for what should have been the most enormous battle. But at the last minute both sides decided not to fight on the grounds that it would cause the needless destruction of the flower of English chivalry, who would be far better deployed fending off marauding Vikings. It makes you go all misty-eyed, doesn't it, the dignity and maturity displayed by our ancestors more than a millennium ago? Even if you've got a surname beginning with De, which probably means you're one of the bastard lot of thugs who came over in 1066 and caused Christ and his saints to sleep for the next two centuries. . . .
This is one of the great things about watching Starkey's version of our island story. You know he's not going to end up suggesting, as Simon Schama probably would and Tristram Hunt certainly would, that actually the archers at Agincourt couldn't hit a barn door at point-blank range, that Henry VIII was thin and quite possibly gay, that it doesn't much matter what our kings achieved because what counts is the oppression they inflicted on minority border peoples and blameless Mohammedans. Rather, his subtext is going to be: The English, the English, the English are best,' And God knows, someone needs to say it in these dark days under this vile regime when once more men are saying `openlice that Christ slep, and his halechen'.
The fact that the series is called Monarchy by David Starkey (Channel 4) is very promising. What it means is that the vulgarian commissioning editors at Channel 4 are so confident of their presenter's pulling power that at no stage will he have to dress in a clown suit to illustrate the lighter side of Henry V, or fly in a Tornado at the same speed as the arrow that went into Harold's eye, or shove a whitehot poker up his arse the better to empathise with the grisly fate of Edward II. Sure, you're going to get the obligatory battle re-enactors in sundry costume changes going `Aaagh'. But mainly it's going to be just a few poetically rolling waves and Starkey spitting to camera with the intensity of a man caught short with dysentery who yet has just one more vital thing to tell you before he hurries to the latrine. Top man. Starkey for prime minister.
Then on Saturdays (BBC2) you've got Francesco da Mosto telling you about Venice, again mostly in the authoritative, lecture-style way which isn't much allowed on TV these days. I suppose some girl at the BBC decided he looked quite shaggable, with his long, grey hair and his louche, aristocratic demeanour (they even show pictures of him smoking and enjoying it, which must be in breach of countless BBC guidelines), and that they could distract from the boring historical stuff with Jamie-Oliver-style footage of Francesco at home in his palazzo with his authentic Italian coffee-brewing machine, Francesco being windswept in his motorboat; and so on. He can be my minister for cultural affairs.
If I were a TV wildlife presenter, I'd be mighty resentful of Steve 'Crocodile Hunter' Irwin's let me see how close I can get to this snake whose bite kills you in under ten seconds' approach to documentary making. It means that the only way of getting your own mug on TV is to take even more stupid risks — as our own amiable Nigel Marven so impressively demonstrated on Nigel Marven's Bull Shark: Search for the Deadliest Shark (Channel 5, Tuesday).
Marven's theory was that while the great white and the tiger shark have certainly done their share of man-eating, neither of them comes close to matching the bull shark — which is not only supremely aggressive, but also horribly versatile, having the ability to kill you in both rivers and the sea because it is at home in both fresh and salt water.
To prove this, he stood knee-deep in water swarming with predatory bulls alongside an American shark behaviour 'expert' who allegedly knew enough to ensure no one got hurt. Except he didn't. Casual as you like, a broad-snouted bull nosed up to him and tore off a huge chunk of his calf. Bags of blood, Fantastic TV, But where's it going to end? Sometime soon, the only such programmes that get made will be snuff wildlife documentaries in which the presenter is eaten alive while microscopic cameras hidden inside his body record every last crunch of serrated triangular tooth on bloodied, shredded tissue. Then we'll get bored and go back to traditional ones about how sweet meerkats are with their eager bobbing heads and about the amazing wildebeest migration.
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