Do they hate us?
Simon Hoggart
The disaster of our no points in the Eurovision Song Contest (BBC1) was, of course, hilarious, though there seemed to me a darker edge in the coverage too. Do they hate us that much? Is it 'cos I is British, as Ali G might say? Was it to do with Iraq, or do they resent the way that British rock — though now in steep decline — used to be second only to American, and far, far ahead of the popular music of any other European country? Imagine if your childhood memories were not of the Beatles or the Stones, but of Francoise Hardy singing `Tous les Garcons et les Filles', a song of which several hours seem to consist of a repeated single note.
But these ridiculous events do have a slight resonance beyond themselves. You might conceivably recall that, on 3 May 1997, the British group Katrina and the Waves entered the contest with 'Love Shine A Light' and didn't just win, but destroyed the opposition. Like the comedy in a Shakespeare play, the victory worked as an absurdist parallel of Tony Blair's
landslide election two nights before. New Labour's win seemed to offer some people, at the time, fresh hope for our country, and, if Katrina's success merely offered the hope that the song would soon drop out of the charts, it still seemed an echo, a glimmer of returning pride and optimism.
So, in the same way, last Saturday's debacle might be thought to have mirrored the disappointment and chagrin which has grown over the past six years. Then again, it could be that the song, 'Cry Baby', was awful and either sung out of key or a sophisticated example of atonal dissonance. Either would go down badly on Eurovision.
There was bags of national pride on view in The Race For Everest (BBC2). Because most of the library film of Sir John Hunt's expedition was in colour, it seemed much more immediate than other events, such as the war, which had happened only a few years before. It was poignantly nostalgic. When the successful team returned to base camp, where the other climbers had been told that they had failed, Mike Westmacott contented himself with shaking Hillary's hand, because that's all that a gentleman needed to do. Now that Everest is like Helvellyn, only busier, people who get to the top — having reached there in 11 hours, or without oxygen, or at the age of 17, or dressed in a chicken suit — presumably pull their shirts over their heads and
perform a dance like David Brent in The Office, or a Maori haka. In 1953, a manly handshake was always enough.
One thing surprised me; the perennial gloom of the British press goes back further than I imagined. I had vaguely assumed that the headlines during the climb would he on the lines of 'Britain's bold adventurers are climbing to glory!' In fact they preferred, as now, to always look on the glum side of life: 'Radio Silence An Ominous Sign,' and 'Everest — Is It All Over?'
Apply Immediately (BBC2) is yet another makeover show, this one trying to shoehorn people into their dream jobs. It was perhaps a mistake to start the series with Pierre South, a young man who had probably been over-promoted to a post in telesales (or 'the corporate rat-race', as he called it). He wanted to become a journalist, and, though I would be the last to claim that this is a difficult job, he had about as much chance of making it to Fleet Street as I have of captaining the England rugby team. His dream was to be political editor of the Times, even though he had no interest in politics, and didn't read the Times. His favourite morning paper was the freesheet Metro, which is a little like applying to be manager of the Royal Opera House on the grounds that you love everything Andrew Lloyd Webber writes.
A programme like this only works if it offers the victim, and us, a degree of hope. There's little point in sitting through it if the subject is a hopeless, self-deluded loser, the equivalent of Dudley Moore's one-legged Tarzan.
Two more losers are Paul and Pauline Calf, the creations of Steve Coogan, who appeared in Paul and Pauline Calf's Cheese and Ham Sandwich (BBC2). This pair are horrible symbols of the new Britain, selfconscious without being self-aware, amoral because they have no concept of morality in the first place. They are hilarious. Pauline's description of how her fella's nose ring had got caught in the other ring `ah've got down there' began as a mildly filthy joke then turned into a brilliant comic routine. "E was down there three hours. We had to go to Casualty; 'ow 'e drove there I'll never know. Lucky the car had a sun roof . . . ' Or, of a new baby, 'She's called Florence, that's where she were conceived. like Brooklyn Beckham, and Van Morrison.'
Like Big Brother, Wild In Your Garden (BBC2) shows creatures living in an artificial habitat, spied on by hidden cameras 24 hours a day. The atmosphere is a little over-hyped, with too many madly gesticulating presenters, but it is an awful lot sweeter and more appealing than the humans over on Channel 4. And we don't have to vote the badgers out.
Previous page
