Television
Grant consent
Ian Hislop
My newspaper said that Summer Holi- day (BBC 1, Tuesday, 7.00 p.m.) would reveal that the Amersham hotel room fea- tured in Four Weddings and a Funeral was booked up until Christmas by Hugh Grant lovers. I must confess to watching the pro- gramme with more than average interest since the Six O'Clock News had just revealed that in real life Hugh Grant does not always make it to a hotel room. He was arrested in Los Angeles for 'lewd conduct' with a prostitute in a public place. One would normally worry about the contempt laws before writing about this sort of case since Hugh Grant is to appear before a court next month, but the O.J. Simpson trial has made it pretty clear that American Law does not include much con- cept of contempt. At the end of Channel Four News they actually interviewed a Los Angeles Vice Officer who happily gave the full details. The prostitute was known to local officers, she was called Divine Brown and she got into Grant's car on Sunset Boulevard. A lewd act followed. There was no use of the word 'allegedly', no sugges- tion that there might be any other explana- tion and no attempt by the officer to do anything other than pre-judge the whole case.
Anyway, the item about Hugh Grant had meanwhile disappeared from Summer Holi- day. A jolly presenter called Monty Don went on and on about sleeping in the same bed as Jessica Lange when she was filming Rob Roy. He even asked the lady in the Scottish bed and breakfast if his sheets were the same ones that Jessica Lange had used. But there was no mention of Hugh Grant.
Is this to be his fate? Immediately edited out of respectable programmes and overnight deemed unsuitable for a family audience? Will he ever be considered cud- dly and loveable and quintessentially English again? In the meantime Channel Four News set the agenda for all the serious newspapers by concluding that Grant will have some questions to answer from Eliza- beth Hurley. She was in New York at the time. Hence this week's 'How could he do it to Lovely Liz?' debate in the quality broadsheets.
Perhaps Summer Holiday was just playing it safe. In which case they could have left out an equally insensitive topical remark in the item about Antigua. A reporter called John Pitman got himself bowled out in a game of beach cricket and said 'Another cheap wicket for the West Indies.'
England just beat them at Lord's for heaven's sake. And the cheap wickets on Monday were West Indian. Surely someone at the BBC was watching? In our office the televisions were on all day although the journalists did protest that this was in order to catch John Redwood's announcement of his candidature. As excuses go this was pretty feeble, though not quite as feeble as Redwood's attempt to explain why he had suddenly noticed over the weekend that the Prime Minister and his policies were com- pletely hopeless.
For utter feebleness however one would have to give Redwood the award for his joke at the policy press conference the next day. Redwood began by saying that he could let everyone into a secret. Then he delivered the gag.
`All those intending to vote are voting for John.' No one laughed. No one. Not even Norman Lamont could bring himself to make the necessary response. The politi- cal correspondents on the news later described this joke as 'flat' and said that it was symptomatic of a less exciting second day of the leadership campaign.
If this is the standard of excitement on only the second day I am enormously relieved to be heading off on my own Sum- mer Holiday so I will not have to watch either of the Johns on television. I had planned to go abroad but I have a feeling there might be some sudden vacancies at a hotel in Amersham.
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