Television
Here we go
Alexander Chancellor
ere we go, here we go, here we go,' they sang. 'Here we go, here we go, here we go.' It is a familiar refrain indelibly associated now with Arthur Scargill's re- volutionary army — the battle song of the striking miners. But last Saturday the people singing it were not the grimy sons of toil but hundreds of baby fogeys with funny hats and scarves, dripping with the colours of the Union Flag. Far from being revolu- tionaries, these were the promenaders at the Royal Albert Hall indulging in their annual orgy of supposed patriotic fervour. Because the theme of the Proms this year has been American music, the second half of the Last Night opened with an American march, 'The Stars and Stripes' by Souza. This was the tune which inspired the miners. Now it was being sung with equal gusto and with the same words, by young people who, one can only assume, would have been very much on Mrs Thatcher's side during the miners' strike. It gave me a very odd feeling, as if the world were completely mad. But then The Last Night of the Proms always fills me with very odd feelings. To my embarrassment, I have always been moved by 'Rule Britannia' and 'Land of Hope and Glory', though I am not quite sure why I should be embar- rassed by this for, apart from anything else, they are both very good tunes. At the same time, I have always been filled with shame and horror by the spectacle of the Last Night promenaders with their silly, vacuous faces, swaying to the music of these patriotic anthems. I don't feel as the Guardian feels. In a priggish editorial last Saturday, that newspaper called on the BBC to stop broadcasting The Last Night because, like The Black and White Minstrel Show and The Miss World Contest, it embodied what to many people were `offensive values'. The values represented by Sir Edward Elgar should not be consi- dered offensive simply because he be- longed to a different era in which Britannia really did rule the waves. Even in the `Pomp and Circumstance' marches, his music has a sort of cosiness about it that is still recognisably English. And even if it didn't, even if his music were purely imperialist in inspiration, that would be no reason for not performing it and not
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enjoying it. There is nothing wrong in drawing comfort or inspiration from a vanished imperial past. Every former im perial power does. What is painful about The Last Night of the Proms is the mockery made of all this by the promenaders. I doubt if they are really 'even in search of what the Guardian calls 'post-imperial gratification'. I don't know who they are or where they come from, but they look like the participants in a Rag Week at one of the more dingy establishments of Higher Education. For them, I suspect, it is all a big lark, a chance to show off and let off steam. The twerps should be treated like hecklers at a political meeting, not encour- aged and flattered as if they were the cream of the British music-loving public. I do not blame the conductor, Mr Vernon Handley. He made the occasion as bear- able as it is possible to make it. Those who refuse to watch Dynasty, the American soap opera, will have missed the ghoulish experience last Friday of waiting for Rock Hudson to kiss Linda Evans. The kiss is notorious, because only after it had taken place on the set did Rock Hudson reveal that he was suffering from Aids. I don't know how many other people have kissed Miss Evans since, but the event created panic in Hollywood which lives in terror of an Aids epidemic; and poor Mr Hudson was generally thought to have behaved in a very shabby manner by not revealing his dark secret in advance. It seemed certain during the last episode of Dynasty that we were going to witness this famous kiss. Everything seemed to be leading up to it. `Krystle's' (Miss Evans's) husband was away in Paris, flirting with `Lady Ashley' (Ali MacGraw), and she alone in America was working for Rock Hudson on his ranch. They had clearly taken a shine to each other, and after a bit they ended up in a barn, lying side by side on some straw. But the kiss never took place. Perhaps it will be in the next episode. As for Rock Hudson, he looked very handsome and distinguished, Aids notwithstanding.
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