Television
Let them eat Cake
James Delingpole
You know when you've taken so many drugs that all you can do is go, 'Wow! This is incredible! At last I am privy to the hid- den secrets of the universe!'? Perhaps not, but you'll get a pretty damned good idea just by sitting through Even Further Abroad with Jonathan Meades (BBC 2, Wednes- day).
Louche, sinister and probably certifiable, Meades may well be the most exciting thing to happen to television since Kenneth Tynan said `****'. Into each half-hour episode, the intellectual yob-cum-restau- rant-critic has managed to condense almost everything that was ever wonderful about the medium: the intelligence of A.J.P. Tay- lor, the surrealism of Dennis Potter, the quirkiness of a Tim Pope rock video, the grubby, fly-on-the-wall verite of The Family, the thuggery of The Sweeney and .
I could go on but you get the message. Yes, I am trying to wind up all those peo- ple who simply can't see the point of a fat suit in Ray Bans bellowing his contrary views about architecture while the camera crew struggle to film him from ever-weird- er angles.
And though I really am a huge fan, I'd be the first to concede that Meades's argu- ments are sometimes clever-clever to the point of absurdity and that the visual gim- mickry is so relentless you nearly lose the plot. But for me this is what makes it so fantastically watchable. It keeps you on your toes; you never get bored; and it forces you to think freshly about subjects you might hitherto have taken for granted.
Such as the 'Big Tech' modern architec- ture — tower blocks, television transmit- ters, giant early-warning golf balls, nuclear reactors — erected before we lost our faith in the 'idea of progress'. Meades, of course, claims to believe that these edifices are all rather wonderful and laments the environ- mental fascism that has led to their pariah status.
`There's nothing natural about nature,' he booms. 'Nature is always improvable. It needs man to shape it.' Next week, he argues that Dorset's clifftops would be improved by the addition of several thou- sand more caravans. And, for the duration of the programme at least, it's hard to resist Meades's beguiling combination of considered aestheticism and jaunty philis- tinism. Best of all are the incidental distractions. The caravan episode, for example, starts with Meades holding a bloody, severed arm: 'A naked ball joint,' he declares, 'is a hideous thing.' This week's began more shockingly yet, with a glorious pastiche of The Terminator which called for the presen- ter to appear starkers. And throughout the series, there's splendid running joke about Meades's loutishness: Meades crushing the populace of a model village and setting alight a thatched roof with a discarded fag; Meades elbowing aside innocent members of the public to deliver his snidey pieces to cam- era; and so on. I'd love to know how much they were told before filming took place. Were Duke and Duchess, the elderly, bike- riding, caravan-pulling rottweiler enthusi- asts aware they were being mocked? Was the nudist colony told — 'Ignore him. He s mad'? I had a similar debate with my girlfriend about Chris Morris's Brass Eye (Channel 4, Wednesday), especially the inspired episode in which MP David Amess was gulled into asking questions in the House about a made-up new death-drug called Cake. My girlfriend refused to believe that the myriad celebrity victims of Morris's practical jokes weren't complicitous. I checked. They really didn't have a clue. Now you know, you can appreciate the final episodes in all their squirm-inducing glory. Actually, though, I can well understand how these people were taken in. I'm just as credulous when watching Forman TT/ (Channel Four, Wednesday), a programme I find strangely addictive, even though it takes us into the anoraky X-Files territory of strange phenomena and the unex- plained. So how do you explain the vast number of dead goats and chickens found in Ce tral and South America with huge fang marks in their necks and all the blood sucked out of them? Quite obviously, it has to be the work of a genetic mutation called a goat sucker. And what about that manic'', olive-wood chalice with restorative prope ties, owned by a mysterious Welshwoman? The Holy Grail — has to be. What sways me is the evident trustwor- thiness of the presenter, Father Lionel Fanthorpe. Never mind that he's bald, bearded, wears a leather jacket with his dog collar and rides a motorbike — I (191)1 get the impression that he's an evangelical trendy. And he's not one of those fake priests, either: kosher Anglican, I checked in Crockfords. His approach is one of amused diffidence: 'Take it or leave it,' -111e seems to be implying after each, loopy tit- bit. 'But just remember, God moves in ntY9- terious ways.' I'm convinced, and, even if you're ,fint' it's still worth watching just for the hilari- ous bit at the end where Fanthorpe croons a silly song with his trusty, guitar-wielding side-kick, Alf.
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