Television
Bottoms up
Alexander Chancellor
In those happy, far-off days when News at Ten was regularly presented by Reginald Bosanquet and Anna Ford, it was the contrast between them which the people of Britain so enjoyed. Reggie was an out- rageous old flirt who played on his charm for all it was worth; Anna, on the other hand, seemed alMost to resent her beauty, fearing it would somehow get in the way of the news. There were more important things in life than sexual attraction, she seemed to be telling us, and we had better not forget it.
Now sexual attraction has become her special subject. She has written a whole, book about men and their sexual prefer- ences which can currently be sampled by readers of the Sunday Telegraph. And last Sunday she appeared on Did You See. . .? (BBC2) to discuss whatever it is that makes men and women fancy each other. She was reviewing last week's QED (BBC1) which purported to be a serious, scientific attempt to get to the bottom of this question. The bottom, indeed, played a major part in the programme, for the bottom apparently comes second only to the face as the anatomical feature most likely to arouse the interest of the opposite sex. Anna Ford called bottoms 'bums' and bosoms 'big ones'. She also referred at one stage to 'our smellier nooks and crannies'. I was quite upset to hear such language from a woman so serious, so beautiful and so self-possessed. The fact that she con- demned the programme for prurience and for its failure to portray sex as something joyful and ecstatic did. not diminish my sense of shock. She was quite right, though, in condemning it. It was an absurd programme and, as the poet Christopher Logue said, 'an insult to the people watch- ing it'. Ludovic Kennedy, the presenter of Did You See. . .?, thought the whole thing might have been a deliberate 'con', not really intended to be taken seriously. I had wondered about that too but had reluctant- ly dismissed the idea. The only thing one can say in the programme's favour is that it would have been even more unbearable if it had been full of joy and ecstasy.
Viewers who could not face QED on 'The Science of Sexual Attraction' had a choice last Wednesday between Blott on the Landscape (BBC2) and The Last Place on Earth (Central, ITV). These two pro- grammes regularly coincide and doubtless divide thousands of families between those who want to watch Captain Scott being done down by Trevor Griffiths and those who manage to laugh at the BBC's labo- rious dramatisation of Tom Sharpe's novel. Neither, in my opinion, is any good at all. Captain Scott may or may not have been an admirable man, but Mr Griffiths's scriPt is unworthy of him, whatever he was like. No man who did what he did could have. talked in these absurd imperialist cliches, and nobody without powerful left-wing prejudices could have attributed them t° him. Blott is the sort of comedy which think some people call 'zany', but the humour is lost on me. The series is heavy-going and often rather distasteful. Those who could not stand any of this were rewarded late on Wednesday evening by the appearance on Channel 4 of the Spectator's Geoffrey Wheatcroft, who had been brought on to Book Four, a new literary series presented by the eager Her mione Lee, as the only man in Englartu brave enough to put forward the view that VAT should be imposed on books. Although being treated by Miss Lee and her ally on the programme, Michael Hur royd, like a sweet but naughty little boy, he managed to survive the experience with his dignity intact. Even those who could,uut grasp his argument will have gone to be°, b,etter disposed towards the taxing es' books, if only out of admiration for his courage and stamina. In the absence of Sir Robin Day because of illness, Newsnight's Donald MacCor- mick presented BBC1's Question Time last Friday, and very good he was too. Sir Robin is incomparable at what he does, but it was quite refreshing for a change to have such a modest fellow in the chair. Without the Day banter, the programme was un- usually relaxing to watch. The most sur- prising comment was Tony Benn's about Arthur Scargill, whom he compared 0, Winston Churchill after the evacuation et Dunkirk. I never thought I would live r° hear that particular comparison made.
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