Will Waspe's Whispers
The interrogations on the London Weekend Tele.
vision Man in the News show, never renowned for spikiness, begin to look alarmingly puffy. Last Sunday's programme was a blatant PR job on behalf of the travel trade — and Clarkson's in particular, their boss Tom Gullick being the man allegedly in the news.' With John Carter of the Times and Alastair Burnet as tame 'feeds,' the smooth Gullick was encouraged to set everybody's fears at rest about everything from unbuilt hotels to the unpopularity of British holidaymakers. It would be scandalous to suggest that the show was 'bought,' but I'm sure you do not doubt that LWT will be amply recompensed when the travel advertising campaigns begin.
I stuck with LWT on Sunday to see David Frost's friend Diahann Carroll's series, Julia. Aghast but fascinated by its simple-style acting and general simplemindedness. I didn't catch on to what had happened until it was interrupted by a public service ' commercial ' telling toddlers how to cross the road safely. Obviously the whole slot had been scheduled inadvertently for 11.45 pm instead of 11.45 am. Probably all due to a typist's error somewhere along the line, but doesn't anyone check?
Whoa, the fairies
This year's Edinburgh scandal has hardly lacked substance: pooverie in the Festival Club, and enough of it for Complaints to be Registered and a special club committee convened. The meeting was interrupted by an assertion from the chairman of the Scottish Minorities Group that it was a gay club anyway (which will have surprised all those old ladies taking afternoon tea — or perhaps they weren't old ladies), and why shouldn't boys wear make-up, and would assorted councillors stop making rude and offensive' remarks. , For myself, dodging the flying handbags and hoping that nothing would frighten the horses, I tried to remember that someof-my-best-friends-etc. I could not but blench, however, at the brazenness with which a self-styled senior lecturei in English from an American university picked up a bit of local fluff. All the swishing reminded me of how London queens carried on ten years ago. Sad that the only way Edinburgh should betray her provincialism is in the behaviour of her pooves.
Knock-out Punch
Bad news for Shakespeare lovers who might have thought that, with Peter Brook far away in Persia, the works of the Bard were temporarily safe from further molestation on the lines of his ' circus ' version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Word reaches me that Peter McEnery directing Richard III, due to open at Nottingham Playhouse on September 22, is doing it as a 'Punch and Judy' show.
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