Television
Idle chat
Jeffrey Bernard
' Saturday nights on BBC 1 end with this absolutely fantastic programme called Parkinson. He gets some really terrific people on it and the whole thing is incredibly relaxed with guests using phrases like 'bull-shit' and words like 'crap' and you really get a pretty good idea of what some of the stars are like as real people.
I mean, take last week's show. Diana Rigg, sort of incredibly beautiful in a way and actually a bloody good actress you know, sat down with Parkinson — just like you and I might talk — and you could see that she was incredibly bright really and just like anyone else except that she's got these fanbloodytastic legs. Anyway, you probably think that she's had everything her own way and just has to crook her little finger to get what she wants, but it turns out that she had a pretty rough time of it as a kid and went to this very strict boarding school. What I mean is she's not just a sort of successful dolly bird. She's fantastically
coherent — articulate actually — and it's amazing to think that they didn't realise who she was at school.
Anyway, the bit I liked best in the Programme was when Parky asked her about her knickers. I mean, on television. Her knickers. Well, it turned out that at school she'd hidden sweets in them and that sometimes the chocolate had melted. That really creased Parky. When you think that she's actually played the National Theatre it's a sort of revelation really, isn't it? Added to that, she revealed that she'd looked inside an addiction unit and seen the junkies going through a group therapy session. What I'm getting at is that she's obviously tremendously sympathetic and it's not as though she's not aware of the fact that life can be terrifically meaningful in a nasty way for some of us.
You can't bloody envy her, that's the thing. She's worked jolly hard for what she's got and I think she's fabulous. I mean really fanciable. Anyway, while they were clapping her in the studio, I went out in to the kitchen to make some tea and when I came back Parky had got Muggeridge in the hot seat. Christ almighty. I mean he's always brought me down and he's incredibly old-fashioned. You know, just because he's off sex he thinks we all ought to live like monks. As it turned out, he was marvellous. He's half way between Mr Magoo and a benign tumour and he's got this marvellous voice. He said actors were a load of idiots, and I suddenly realised he was right. It's absolutely staggering in a way but at that moment I suddenly realised that Diana Rigg was full of bull and that I'd only been looking at her face and listening to her accent which is sort of Aldwych-Haslemere. Then Muggeridge went on to say that civilisation as we know it would be brought down by Linda Lovelace. I hadn't actually thought of that but when you come to think of what Christine Keeler nearly did to the British Government I suppose it's on the cards.
In a way it was embarrassing, because I was sort of slightly shocked that people like Diana Rigg and Malcolm Muggeridge actually knew what Linda Lovelace has done, but it proves that Parkinson gets really real people on the show and some of them are quite deep in a way. This week he's talking to Michael Caine and Elton John about their humble beginnings. I'll certainly tune in to that because it's the sort of thing that I think is really fascinating. Actually we had pots of money and this fantastic house in Oxshott and another in Cheyne Walk and I feel sort of rotten about it in a way and I think it really broadens your outlook if you realise that some people haven't had that sort of start.
You may think it sounds daft but I think Parkinson provides a sort of service. Let's face it, I mean without Parky you'd never know that some of the really big names in show business on the Derek Nimmo, Michael Crawford, George Best, Lord Longford level are, in actual fact, quite ordinary human beings in a fantastic sort of way.
Frank Finlay, meanwhile, plods on in Bouquet of Barbed Wire. I watch it halfhooked, but I don't believe a word of it. I suppose there might somewhere be a publisher like Finlay although if there is and he's got a wife like Sheila Allen, a mistress like Deborah Grant and a daughter like Susan Penhaligon he won't be playing it so deadpan. I find Finlay an enigma. He's either a very good actor or he's not bothering to act at all. James Aubrey, who plays his son-in-law, seems to me to be the most real character in it. The story is written by novelist Andrea Newman who wears her heart on her script. I make it a shade of odds on that Miss Newman is a would-be ball crusher.
Watching On the Waterfront for the umpteenth time I'd forgotten how sentimental it is. It's still one of my favourites, but how was it that I'd never noticed before that Karl Malden — the cigarette bending priest — ranks with the all-time great hams like Anthony Quinn and Robert Shaw? And talking of priests, who should
crop up in Under Bow Bells in conversation with the Rev Joseph McCulloch, but Diana Rigg again. This time it was a serious Rigg She and McCulloch were like aDutch aunt and uncle. He seemed a nice, harmless, jolly old man. She said, talking of freedom, "My bondage is myself." Quite. She has a thinly disguised arrogance and conceit and I suppose it's inevitable when people like Parkinson keep announcing that she's the most fanciable thing on two fantastic legs.
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