DIARY JOHN HUMPHRYS
Ihave been suffering from a filthy cold since well before Christmas and it's all the government's fault. Frank Dobson's, to be precise, and he is, dammit, in charge of the nation's health. He came to be interviewed by me for On the Record before Christmas with his own cold and passed his germs to me. A Campbell plot? Possibly. It did more or less coincide with the Harman interview. All I can say is, thank God BSE isn't infec- tious. My interview the following week was with Jack Cunningham.
It's difficult for an old broadcasting hack like me to know whether to love or loathe Brian Walden. He's back on television for the next few weeks with his Walden on Heroes series on BBC 2. It is the ultimate in minimalist television. He just talks into a fixed camera about the five men most peo- ple think of as heroes: Churchill, Lincoln, Alexander the Great, Kennedy and Man- dela. There are no moving pictures or even stills; no clever graphics; no visual gim- micks of any sort. And here's the bit that really hurts: there is no autocue either, no script even. He just talks. He begins when the floor manager tells him and stops pre- cisely 29 minutes and 30 seconds later. He doesn't fluff and stumble like normal human beings and when he has to grope for a word he always finds the right one. There is no editing. Every programme was record- ed in one continuous take. Every sentence is perfectly formed, every thought mea- sured and tested. It is, in short, sickening. I remember hearing a famous American singer on Desert Island Discs some years ago who chose a song by the incomparable Ella Fitzgerald. When she'd finished he said, 'I hear singing like that and wonder why I bother.' I watch Walden and I know exactly what he means.
The critics, by and large, do not share my enthusiasm for Walden's performance. The general response has been, why both- er? If television can liven things up with pictures then that's what it should do. Who wants to make the effort just to hear some- one talk? If it must be done like that then radio is the obvious place to do it. But they forget that talking, when it is done well, is a performance and has always attracted an audience who wants to see as well as hear. Too often, in my business, we hide behind clever gee-whiz graphics which, as often as not, obscure the message rather than enhance it. Not for nothing was that sort of thing dubbed JOS (junk on screen) years ago by, I think, Chris Dunkley. So it was then, so it is today. Televison newsreaders, of course, won't leave home without an autocue. We may not be quite as bad as Ronald Reagan, who was said to need two (one for the 'Good . . . ' and the other, with the turn of the head, for the '. . . morning'), but we all live in fear of those three words from the direc- tor, 'The autocue's down.' In the old days we had to operate the wretched thing our- selves, a shaky foot on a pedal controlling the speed of the loo roll with the words on it balanced above the lens. Then the opera- tors (known in those politically incorrect days as the autocue girls) came along and it was fine so long as they were sober. One of them seldom was — you may have noticed if you'd watched the Nine O'Clock News very carefully a few years ago. Now it's all terribly fancy and computerised and sel- dom goes wrong. But the newsreader does. The great enemy is spoonerising. ITN's `cross-flannel cherry' was praiseworthy, but my favourite was a BBC offering. The newsreader was required to say that the Israelis were 'shelling the city of Tyre'. She spoonerised 'shelling' and 'city'. Fair enough. But then she tried to correct, and `Say, "Blair": spoonerised 'city' and 'Tyre'. Sheer bliss. And there, but for the grace of God... .
I've been spending a few days with friends on their farm. They're delightful people, but a bit odd. Here we are, coming to the end of the 20th century, and they spurn most modern farming techniques, reject most of what we've learned since the war. Ancient hedges still divide their fields (far more efficient to rip 'em out); the pigs still rootle around in muddy fields and live in their own little huts (far more efficient to confine sows to antiseptic stalls and cut the tails off the piglets); the cows give steady quantities of milk year after year (far more efficient to force vast yields off them and slaughter them when they can't take the pressure any longer). And you should see what they do to their fields, or rather, what they don't do. They don't spread tons of chemical fertilisers and spray every weed and bug in sight with yet more chemicals. That means they have to work much harder to control the weeds and rotate the crops ' and so employ many more people. Good for the rural economy, but what a hassle. They don't seem to mind. They don't mind the racket the birds make (on a truly effi- cient, up-to-date farm you don't have to put with birdsong because they've mostly disappeared). My friends are such fussy eaters that they prefer their own bacon and chickens and eggs and beef which hasn't been stuffed full of growth-enhancers and actually tastes the way food used to taste. They'd actually prefer not to be eating great cocktails of chemicals day in, day out. As I say, they're rather odd people. But here's the really odd thing. They're making loads of money. Organic farming is hugely profitable once you've made the transition from intensive farming. So why, you ask, don't more do it? After all, Britain has to import most of its organic produce from foreign countries where farmers are paid sensible sums to see them through the tran- sition. Why what a sweet, naive little thing you are! Subsidies cost money and every- one knows the government has none to spend. Well, not unless you count the bil- lions in subsidies paid to intensive arable farmers to grow food even when we don't want it all, and despoil the countryside at the same time. Or the five billion BSE will cost us (not a single mad cow on my friends' farm). Or the billions more we spend clearing up the mess chemical farm- ing leaves behind. As I say, there's simply no money available. To give organic farm- ing the boost it needs would cost . . . ooh . . . tens of millions. What's that you say? Reform the Common Agriculture Policy? Now who's being silly!
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