Television
How embarrassing
Simon Hoggart
Funny how nobody remembers Ford cars. Minis and Morris Minors all have their devotees who spend hours a week cherishing them. But who ever cherished a Sierra, or a Cortina2? Ford cars are dispos- able and no more likely to be lovingly pol- ished at weekends than an old electric toaster.
But the naffest of all naffmobiles was surely the Ford Capri, the penis on wheels, which turned up, of course, on Sounds of 69, part of Channel 4's 'strand' about the Sixties and the summer of peace and love.
Someone said that if you could remem- ber the Sixties you weren't there. But I remember them all too well. Far from being an explosion of creativity, a brief but shining era which changed our conception of the world, they were three or four years (the 'Sixties' didn't actually begin until the late 1960s) of almost pure embarrassment.
The Ford Capri — flashy, 'revolutionary', designed to be looked at rather than used, basically eye-catching junk — was the per- fect symbol. As John Lennon said, 'Noth- ing happened in the Sixties except that we all dressed up.'
The programme had layers of irony like filo pastry. Sir Jimmy Savile, the jabbering disc jockey who did so much to lower pop- ular broadcasting standards in this country (Zoe Ball and her incoherent friends are his true heirs and successors), blathered on about the 'pop music industry descending into the corruption that comes with liberty'. Jimmy Savile as an arbiter of taste! Next week: John Prescott's Correct English Usage.
The lead singer of Marmalade came on to talk about the success of 'Ob-la-di, Ob- la-da', perhaps the worst Number One hit of a fairly disastrous year. These days I sus- pect he wouldn't even be recognised by the pop anoraks on Never Mind the Buzzcocks.
Then it was different: 'I was dating a girl from the Playboy, who had the largest breasts in the club.' I picture her now, mar- ried to a successful but insulted car dealer in Essex: 'I knew you got around a bit, dar- link, but you're telling me you slept with the lead singer of Marmalade? Strewth ...'
More irony: Tony Blackburn emerged as having better taste than most other people on the show. He hated 'Lily The Pink' and `Albatross'. He didn't tell us at the time, of course. He wouldn't have dared. The icon- oclastic Sixties was about everyone doing the same and thinking the same. Germaine Greer revealed that she really liked 'Where Do You Go To, My Lovely?', a toe-curling dirge which includes some of the most clunking lines in musical history, including the unforgettable 'Just for Fun/For a Laugh/Ha, ha, ha!'
So much naffness, so little time! The Black and White Minstrel Show was still going. Endless guitar solos, which everyone pretended to enjoy, though not even half a dozen pints and a joint could dull the pain of Ginger Baker on autopilot. The investiture of the Prince of Wales, a ceremony meant to evoke druids, Owen Glendower and the Black Prince, but which looked like a Gay Pride march down Carnaby Street. Best of all was the commentary by Alan Freeman, who had been there and could take some of the blame, but used irony in mitigation of his offence. As the appalling 'In The Year 2525' played, he remarked: 'Pop stars started fan- tasising about the future, a work of funny lettering and dry ice.' As it happens, Marvin Gaye's 'I Heard It Through The Grapevine' was a hit in the same year. It had nothing to do with the Sixties, but is probably heard more often today than all the other 18 Number Ones put together.
Dispatches, also on Channel 4, ran a spe- cial about Muslim militancy in Britain to coincide with the sentencing of British Mus- lims in Yemen. It was of the documentary genre known as the flesh-creeper, designed to persuade you that if global warming, the millennium bug or an asteroid don't destroy your life, then a bunch of angry Muslims will. The trouble with the relentlessly fore- boding tone is that it can quickly become banal. For instance, we saw a group of sur- vivalists practising the outlaw life in the forests for after the coming conflagration. But it's hard to take them seriously when the wood turns out to be near Slough, and one has brought a battery-powered TV 'so I don't miss Match of the Day'.
The Eyes of Tammy-Faye, also on Chan- nel 4, was all the better because almost none of her old 'friends' and colleagues appeared. Her egomania was consequently left to shine like a lighthouse. I visited Her- itage USA, the religious theme park she established with her then husband Jim Bakker, shortly before his multi-million dollar fraud was exposed. The director of corporate affairs told me that their next project was a Heaven 'n' Hell ride. I said this might be difficult to design, since, we were taught that Heaven was merely the presence of Christ, and Hell its opposite.
He looked at me as if I'd said that back in England we worshipped empty Coca- Cola bottles. 'No,' he said carefully, 'there are very exact descriptions in the Bible, and we shall be following God's blueprint' — or words to that effect. Luckily it was never built. However wonderful the artificial Heaven might have looked, it could never have made it seem worth spurning the girl with the largest breasts in the Playboy, or forgoing any other worthwhile sin.
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