Press
Look! never learns
Bill Grundy
Somebody once said — it was me, I think — that the press is your original two-backed beast, dealing as it does with the tremendous and the trivial, and both at the same time. But you can see it as well in indivual papers and, oddly enough, in the Sunday Times most of all.
I yield to none in my admiration of that journal for its journalism. I yield to none in my detestation of that journal for the chi-chi that fills the Look! section of its Weekly Review. Take last week for example. The paper proper was its usual sound self, covering the land deal laugh-in, the wave of bombings in London and the provinces, the French succession, the mortgage mess, and lots of other jolly things, all of interest to any sensible sort of soul.
But Look! My,oh, my. What a fall was there, my countrymen. There was an article by Phillip Knightley on the circumcision of his threeyear-old son, in which Mr Knightley related how the boy was treated during his painful little trauma. It could have been an interesting article, if only because it was a welcome change from articles attacking the National Health Service. Young Master Knightley had been well looked after and his father said so, ending the article with the words: "Well done, St Mary's. Well done, National Health." But the tone of the piece was absolutely excruciating. It was headed — oh so predictably — "Unkindest cut of all," for which I do not blame Mr Knightley, since no man can be held responsible for what somebody else sticks on the top of his hard-hewn words. But Mr Knightley can, indeed must, be held responsible for the words themselves. They were insufferably coy, trendy, with-it, you name it and I didn't like it. Here's a for-instance. Mr Knightley explained to his son that ". . . the result (of the operation) would be a member with a nice ring a round it like Dad's. He would also be able to pee harder and faster." The night after the operation young Knightley "fought sleep, on the grounds we later realised, that the last time he had gone to sleep someone had cut the end of his
dick off, so he was not going to risk ever going to sleep again". I don't want to quote anymore, thank you very much.
On another page Judith Hann "describes the joys of the middleclass scramble for the allotments", and there's a picture of her scrambling on her allotment in a fun fur and a cloche hat, which is appropriate enough, I suppose, if a little Gatsby.
Look!'s addiction to puns, usually thought of as a sign of retarded intellect, reached a new level with the following deathless couplet: "Will Nancy ever tire of/Henry kissing her?". And it really snapped when reporting readers' responses to a call for words to fit our inflationary society. Headed "Nice two, Cyrils", the article said it had all
been "truly twoderful. Unfivetunately . . . it was all three, three, three much". I couldn't have put it better myself.
As it happens, that particular Review was less sick-making than usual. But it still made me wonder just who it is aimed at. I have on occasions thought that they were actually taking the mickey out of the middle class, just as Marc did with The Life and Times of NW1. But the realisation that they actually mean it comes coldly in, very depressing it is too.
If it weren't the Sunday Times, I don't think I'd object so much. There are silly folk who must follow the latest trend, however trivial. There are silly folk who think things like "At least he hasn't taxed sport. Anyone for dennis?" and "German seances can be Herr-raising" are witty. (I know you won't believe me, but both of those are actual examples of what Look! gives space to each week). But I can hardly believe that they are the sort of people who appreciate the Sunday Times fine reporting of world events, its splendid investigative journalism, its eminently well-balanced leading articles, and its courage in taking up causes like the thalidomide affair, the Hanratty case, and the sad story of Timothy Evans. I know it takes all sorts to make a world, but I can't believe that such opposing sorts can be combined in any one person. I've heard of schizophrenia, but that's going too far.
Perhaps I'm being unreasonable in going on at such length about what is, after all, only a small part of a big paper. But I I don't think so. I happen to think that stuff like Look! resembles measles, in that it is catching. Good writing, of which there used to be plenty in the Sunday Times, is a very delicate plant. It can wither remarkably quickly. It is because I respect the Sunday Times so much that I resent what seems to me a regular weekly fall on the rest of the paper's high standards.
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