Fat, fair, yoghurt-eating
Arthur Marshall
A Small Thing — Like an Earthquake Ned Sherrin (Weidenfeld & Nicolson £10.95) hance and wide talents have made Ned
Sherrin something of a Jack of All Trades in the entertainment world and although he has become master of many, among which autobiography must now be included, he will probably be chiefly remembered as the inventor and inspirer and the force behind that great revolu- tionary breakthrough television programme called That Was The Week That Was.
That irreverent series of songs and sket- ches neatly divided the viewing public into the fors and againsts, the Pros and the Cons, though Pros is hardly perhaps a suitable word for the admirers of a collec- tion of items in which freshness and a faint- ly amateur quality were important. All was kept purposely casual and the result was at times not unlike the playing of determined- ly risque charades in a rather unusual coun- try house, though in this case the players would have briskly disassociated themselves from country houses and all that they imply in the Establishment world.
There is of course nothing new in clever young people cocking snooks at their elders and, sometimes, betters. At my admirable school, Oundle, it was always the bright boys in the History VI who enjoyed rebell- ing. Every other year there used to be a locally printed publication called A Univer- sal Independent, of which I have retained some copies. It poked fun, no difficult task, at the headmaster and staff and all their ac- tivities. Not even the school chaplain was, so to speak, considered sacred (he was pic-
tured, after the harvest Festival Service, speedily rifling altar and pulpit and carrying off the best of the fruit and veg for home use).
The half dozen or so writers of this scur- rillous magazine evidently realised that their material would, through parental respon- sibility, be worth many thousands of pounds in libel actions in the law courts and they therefore enclosed with each copy a typewritten note. It read 'Owing to the justifiable ill-feeling this Mag. is bound to arouse, we would be very glad if fellows would keep it to themselves and refrain from bringing it back next term'. The copies were distributed on the last night at a shilling a go, and the word 'fellows' sets this edition's period. However, Oundle being the liberal and tolerant institution it has always been, I doubt if there was much ill- feeling, for it was all fairly jocular and jolly stuff, the editor explaining that 'a vindictive attitude' was not its aim. Indeed, I rather suspect that masters, most of whom manag- ed to get copies, who were not included in the jibes might well have felt disappointed.
But there can have been little disappoint- ment among politicians and clerics and other possible victims at non-exposure to the abrasive attentions of TW3, even though in those early 1960s the viewing public was considerably smaller than today. Although I admired the skill of some of the writing, and sometimes approved of some of the targets chosen, I have to enrol myself among the Cons (which also stands for Conservatives) for I deplored the total absence of charm. I know full well that they weren't in the business for charm but per- formers ignore it at their peril. However,
safe from expensive financial storms beneath Hugh Greene's benevolently pro- tective umbrella, the sky was the limit as regards offensiveness and cruelty and there was a venomous glitter in the eyes of some of the participants that was visually highly displeasing.
There was, earlier on but in rather similar fields, no more spirited fun-poker than the revue writer, Herbert Farjeon, but he did it with grace and humour and subtlety. TW3 was about as subtle as the Albert Memorial. It was like callow undergraduates going ‘ya' and 'boo'. It earned for itself the title of 'satire', a word for which Mr Sherrin is hard put to find an adequate description, and in his search he quotes much from Gilbert Highet's The Anatomy of Satire. The problem was not one that bothered Pamela Hansford Johnson. Asked, after her husband, Lord Snow, had been set an as one of the Aunt Sallies, for a one word description of the word 'satire', she sup- plied 'cheek': which will do nicely. However, in the words of Millicent Martin (now, she did have a lot of charm) 'it's over, let it go.'
-TW3 is far from representing the true nature of Mr Sherrin for he is delightfully full of jokes and warmth and lets it be known that, before he became widely familiar, facially, to the world, he was very variously described in magazines as 'fat, fair, yoghurt-eating', 'blond and bulky' and 'small, dark and darting' — take your pick. He supplies fascinating theatrical facts galore (can it really be true that one of the projected titles for the matchless West Side Story was Shut Up and Dance?). He has been a revue-producer, an ATV employee, an editorial contributor to the BBC's Tonight (that so far unsurpassed magazine programme) and, when the suc- cessor to the short-lived TW3, Not So Much a Programme, was fairly quicklY discontinued, he bravely plunged into the film world and such cinematic eccentricities as Up The Chastity Belt and Up The Front, the front in this case being that of the first world war, with Frankie Howerd as a bat- man (the kind that doesn't fly). He was compere of the hugely successful and unforgettable Side by Side by Sond- heim and with the late, alas, Caryl Brahrns wrote and invented several musicals, among them, and recently, The Mitford Girls for which lively discussion was necessary with the extant representatives of that remarkable family, the ducal one chipping in early on with a characteristic 'You don't think the poor old British Public have had enough of our ugly mugs?' How merry to read that the Duke of Devonshire, himself Mitford-involved, wanted to rechristen the play La Triviata.
About all this, A Small Thing — Like all Earthquake makes very agreeable reading and it is particularly good on the extraor- dinary variations in audience reaction. You never know where you are with them. As dear Dame Sybil so typically summed it up, 'Some nights, they're porridge; some nights — electricity!'
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