Television
Thin old stuff
Richard Ingrams
Turning on my television set after the lapse of many years I was surprised how little things seemed to have changed. There was What's My Line ? with Eamonn Andrews looking as youthful as ever, and Barbara Kelly and Lady Barnett. It was only when the features of the late Gilbert Harding filled the screen that I realised that this was yet another summer repeat, dredged up by the BBC in order to fill the summer schedules, while all the staff swan off to America pretending to be bona fide observers of the presidential election.
However it certainly makes a change to have such very ancient repeats. I am therefore prepared to overlook the utterly bogus excuse—forty years of television—which the BBC has put forward to justify the scraping of so many old barrels. What's My Line ? was followed by another programme featuring poor Gilbert Harding, the Face to Face interview with John Freeman. Harding, unlike Freeman, came across as a human being—boozy, vulnerable and very unhappy. Freeman's questions, many of them apparently intended to make Harding admit to being a sadist, seemed inept and rather unpleasant. But the programme I suspect would have meant little to many people under forty. No attempt was made by the BBC to explain who Gilbert Harding was or to explain how and why he came to be a 'personality'. I do not know whether the BBC intends to show any more of these Freeman interviews. If so they would do better to choose people who are still
remembered—Jung or Evelyn Waugh— rather than someone like Harding who is now almost completely forgotten. (But then a suspicious thought crosses one's mind. Do these interviews survive—or have they, like so much of the BBC's material, been destroyed? The Corporation is very touchy about this subject, partly because of the wide-scale vandalism, and also because of a rather murky agreement with the actors' union Equity which makes it prohibitively expensive to re-show old programmes featuring their members.)
I was sorry to see my old friend Ned Sherrin reduced to compering a wretched apology for a quiz programme called Who Said Thai? Sherrin used to be very good at Quiz of the Week, on which I myself appeared regularly until the cowardly BBC took it off after complaints from on high. But this new quotation game is very poor stuff, despite the naughty Sherrin's engaging crudity. These quiz programmes are only any fun if there are clever people who know all the answers or funny ones who don't but can come up with the odd joke or two. There were no jokes from last week's quartet— Robert 'Baldy' Robinson, Ginette Spanier, Humphrey Lyttelton and Lady Magnesia— nor did any of them know any of the answers. The result was a lot of this sort of thing: Sherrin: Who said 'Sir, I cannot abide mutton chops' ? (Long silence. Head scratching. Lady Magnesia gives her Head of the Dragon School look, demure and thoughtful.) Sherrin (smirking): It wasn't Lamb. '
( Robinson chuckles, Studio audience titter deferentially.)
Magnesia (tentatively): Was it Oscar Wilde ?
Sherrin: No. It was Max Beerbohm.
All panellists: Aaaaaaah! Oh yes. Of course, etc.
The programme is now due for a rest. I suggest that all those concerned give their brains a good racking before it returns.
Someone who never seems to take a rest is Melvyn Barg. You may accuse him of many things, but he is very industrious. I missed the beginning of his new show Word of Mouth and switched on to seea tall, bearded Scotsman looking like Jesus Christ Superstar striding up and down a billiards hall. I couldn't follow what he was saying but as the programme continued and more and more Scotsmen appeared, it emerged that the half-hour was devoted to an exploration of why people in Edinburgh have different accents from those in Glasgow. 'Do you see anything on-going in it ?' Barg earnestly asked a sociologist as the programme drew to a welcome close. The sociologist mouthed some appropriate jargon and that was that. Perhaps we could now have an examination in depth of Barg's own controversial accent, with comments from 'A Doctor' on whether or not he ought to have his adenoids removed.
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