Television
Don't look now
Jeffrey Bernard
The thing to do with television at the moment is to ignore it. I know I'm going to get out of here as soon as I can and take myself off to the chicken-and-chips belt of the Mediterranean and there's a good chance that I may never write this column again. Wimbledon was the last straw, I suppose, or more like a haystack than a straw. That and the weather, anyway. I mean, can you imagine sitting at home night after night watching a box that increases the room temperature by about ten degrees and that during the silly season for television ? Of course, the BBC coverage of Wimbledon is excellent, and I say that convinced of the fact that Jack Kramer and I keep watching different games judging by the remarks he makes when it's all over. But that's a small point. No it isn't. And his voice gets on my nerves.
Anyway, here I am knocking television but it's only fair to say that it's saved my life in a sort of way. For the past two and a half years I've managed to ignore all those bottles and pubs and people that go to make life so wonderful and unbearable. I couldn't have done it without my daily fixes of television. But now that I'm having a drink again it occurs to me that nothing but really nothing on television can equal the enormous pleasure of conversation with people you like gathered together around an overpriced and churlish wine. I say that in spite of the fact that the conversation of some of my friends sounds as awful as repeated highlights from Crossroads.
Wimbledon has finally got me unplugging my faithful old set. It's been the spectators at those courts that have given me a pain and not so much the players. Mind you, Nastase is, I think, one of the unfunniest comedians currently playing this country but he gets enormous encouragement from the tennis fans who are the sort of people who think Max Bygraves has talent. Last year they behaved dreadfully with regard to Mrs King whose expertise and will to win was such an unBritish thing. A lot was said and written about Virginia Wade's temperament being dodgy but since temperament is an integral part of any player's make-up then she simply wasn't a good enough player. Excuses, excuses.
The Wimbledon crowd cast Mrs King in the role of the villain because she was a winner and that went against the grain that ran through Dunkirk and all that. Now, Nastase is the hero and I must presume that his antics must follow closely the sort of antics indulged in by Wimbledon faithfuls when they give cocktail parties on saved up luncheon vouchers in Basingstoke or
wherever it is that these people live. But it is odd this business of English players not having the right sort of temperament. For a race of people who are very quick to geld temperamental horses you'd think they might have found a cure for tennis players and Test cricketers. But no. They just give them lots of applause.
Talking of the spirit of Dunkirk I see, or at least I didn't see, that Clayhanger is finished. I wish I'd watched the final episode. How odd that it missed and 1 wonder was it always going to because they were the wrong books to adapt. Probably not. I think it shows just how very, very important—vital in fact—it is for casting to be spot on. And that doesn't mean that the people in Clayhanger aren't good, just not quite right for that. No, whoever it is that's the casting director for the BBC coverage of Wimbledon that's the fellow who should be given an Oscar for the crowd scenes. Apart from a few niggling doubts —like why aren't they all at work-1 think they're wonderful.
Come to think of it, when people get back from their holidays and as so often happens you hear them say, `We met a really delightful couple in Alicante,' or wherever, you can be pretty sure that the delightful couple were Wimbledon freaks.
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