Television
Bluff-calling
Jeffrey Bernard
Sensible Americans who must curse their bad luck at having won the War of Independence were given yet another reminder of how wonderful the English are when the television cameras plus twenty-two cricketers turned out at Old Trafford on Tuesday morning to play three balls. They were given yet another reminder in the evening when Robert Robinson compered a programme about their lightweight champion Ogden Nash. The Golden Trashery of Ogden Nashery (BBC 2) was really all about Robert Robinson. I don't believe that any other country in the world can produce as many overnight experts as we can and it's to be hoped that Mr koy Jenkins will now start to export them.
Robinson is the master of the dead pan put-down. He is at his very best in appalling programmes like Ask The Family when he plays host to the sort of English idiot who picnics on the edge of the M4. I imagine that he thinks he disguises his disgust for very ordinary people quite well but there's a glazed look in his eyes sometimes and a down-turning, tight-lipped shrug of his mouth that appears to reveal an utter contempt for humanity, television, life in general and practically everything else. He has
a very healthy contempt too for stars and his chairing of Call My BIliff is exactly like that of a charge nurse in a lunatic asylum when the farthest gone patient asks if he can go home. Frank Muir has his measure; the rest of them are gibbering. Now you're going to hate me for saying this, but in my unhumble opinion Ogden Nash isn't really that much to write home about unless you happen to be pun-crazy which is what the English seem to be. All the more odd then as far as I'm concerned that The Golden Trashery of Ogden Nashery was such a good programme. Dinsdale Landen, the 'in' actor of the moment, was an odd choice, but then most actors are better at reading rhymes than they are at acting which requires premeditated thought. Not that Landen isn't good. He's terrific. I've personally seen him loafing about for years and I never could understand why he wasn't adopted before.
Anyway, to get back to Robinson, I just wondered what on earth he could have been doing before he was taken up. I think it's possible that he might have been the resident know-all in one of those revoltingly posh village pubs that are festooned with warming pans and pictures of vintage cars. He looks very much like the sort of man who is obsessed by beer from the wood and who went to a minor public school. In fact he's what Melvyn Bragg could have been had he had the advantages. Lest you misunderstand the gist of what I'm saying, let me make it quite clear and state that Robert Robinson is without doubt the best in the land at the sort of tomfoolery that goes on on television. If anything I regard him with a sort of envy since there's nothing I wouldn't do on television if the money was right and when I say right, I mean on the right side of a tenner. Why they don't get him to read the news, particularly the bad news, is beyond me.
What little fury I can manage to control at the moment is directed against show jumping. The Royal International Horse Show (BBC 1) was something I looked at just to make absolutely sure that I'm not wrong in being bored soft by the business of racing against clocks as opposed to racing against others of the same species. Of course, being a horse racing aficionado, I'm bound to be a little prejudiced, I suppose, but show-jumping people from the owners down, or is it up, to the commentators don't half fancy themselves.
I once went to one of these wretched events somewhere in the country where everyone seemed to be either Jilly Cooper or Melvyn Bragg in a velvet cap and you've never heard anything like the bitching that went on backstage. If it was slightly more dangerous it might add a little more spice perhaps, but as it is, the big wall event leaves me quite cold since the take-off speed at the jumps is so slow. National Hunt jockeys have been surprisingly unsuccessful when they've attempted this lark but they've always put a bit more dash into it to my eyes. The worst aspect though of this
drawing-room racing is the commentary. Here again Robert Robinson could be used to great advantage. What's needed is the voice of a man who's utterly unimpressed by the proceedings. I find it quite irritating that Germans with names that sound like sinks emptying should keep winning but we are still the best in the world at losing.
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