Parlour Game
IN the days before I married I used to go away as frequently as possible, and, with my bank manager's warmest approval, to stay with friends for the weekend. Since marriage my friends have tended to come and stay with me, thus proving that even the most unlikely investment may one day yield a dividend.
Yet in either situation, at home or away, Sunday evening has remained for me, in character, as a period in, so to speak, suspense, when the weekend amusements are ended, the Sunday newspapers scattered around the house and garden, and when the conversation of the guests has lost its novelty. Above all does it live in my consciousness as that moment in time when one has heard, more frequently than at any other, that cri de cceur which sounds like nothing so much as the words 'Would anybody like to play a game?' but which is, in reality, the dying bellow of a dangerously wounded hostess lying up on thick pile carpet in a thicket of Regency furniture and flowering chintz. And for as long as an elephant can remember, and even longer, that • terrifying challenge has always been accepted by a legion of tired and jaded guests who, rather than risk being savaged, have opted, in desperation, for a Parlour game which nobody, least of all the hostess, has ever wished to play. And then, a few years ago, there dropped into the arid desert (or dessert, whichever you prefer) of an English Sunday evening, like manna from above, an American-conceived parlour game, designed not only to end all parlour games but also to remove a growing social problem with a magic wand, called What's My Line? It had everything—personality, entertain- ment, originality, homeliness, glamour—all that the most avid hostess could desire. What's more, it had three inestimable advantages over all other parlour games—first, that it was played on Sunday; secondly, that unless one wanted to, one didn't have to play it oneself; and thirdly, that even if one did, one played it privately and gently, without any risk of loss of self-respect, by merely closing both one's eyes at intervals for certain periods, which naturally could be prolonged at will. Well, there it was, restful, innocent and uncontroversial, the perfect Sunday evening entertainment, and I'm willing to bet most of the money I won on the Lincoln that more than one of the less rigid members of the Lord's Day Observance Society have some times had a guiltless and delightful peep at it.
Then, suddenly, the BBC switched the game from Sunday to Monday evening and, at least so far, as one sad viewer was concerned, destroyed its magic charm. This happened through no fault of the Chairman, nor of the Panel, for Eamonn Andrews is as debonair as ever, Gilbert Harding as perfect, Lady Barnett as accurate. In fact, everything is just as professional as ever—except the impact—or wasn't it ever professional? Did it merely appear professional on a Sunday evening, like
the local butcher singing in the choir at Even- song? Is it the fate of professional players of Sunday parlour games to revert to amateur status if they play them on Mondays, when we are all back at work? Does that explain why I now feel a spiv when I watch them, and even worse, begin to feel that they are spivs as well?
'Why is Lady Barnett• not at a Women's Institute meeting instead of hogging the celebrity like the head girl at Roedean?' ask myself. 'Why is Bob Monkhouse not at home trying to fit a "crack" into a programme instead of a programme into a "crack"?'
In fact I become critical, which is a bad thing, for charades should not be criticised, only played—and only at weekends at that. Otherwise what on Sunday was light and amusing becomes, on Monday, out of place and unsettling, like a fellow wearing a paper cap on Boxing Day.
So switch it back to Sunday evening, my dear BBC, before the death-watch beetle, which knocks off at weekends like the rest of us, begins to chew the panel up.
WILLIAM DOUGLAS HOME
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