Television
Lost face
Richard In grams
T commended ITN's newsreader Selena 1 Scott a week or so ago for avoiding the pitfalls which have brought about the col- lapse of Angela Rippon and Anna Ford. But, oh dear, no sooner were the words out of my mouth than the woman goes and makes a prize idiot of herself. The occasion was A National Salute (ITV), a fairly ap- palling three-hour-long entertainment, a kind of combination of the Royal Tourna- ment and the Royal Variety Performance put on at the Coliseum on Sunday in order to raise money for the South Atlantic Fund. It began with the incongruous figure of Lord Olivier in dark glasses and a beard reading from what looked like a menu card, introducing us to the men and women who had won the great victory, though it turned out afterwards that very few of the soldiers and sailors who then marched proudly onto the stage had been anywhere near the Falklands. There followed the usual old ragbag of tatty comics, magicians and singers, interspersed with moments of banality and embarrassment, the most memorable coming when Frank Finlay, representing Sir Peter Hall and the National Theatre, read out a prayer by St Francis. It all came to a grisly finale with the company and the audience led by Dame Vera Lynn singing 'Land of Hope and Glory' under a large cardboard replica of the Union Jack. This song is tolerable when rendered at the last night of the Proms by flag-waving
students but sung in earnest by the grown- ups struck a discordant and distasteful note. As Christopher Booker has writtten, the Falklands victory relied on a very strong element of luck. One or two better aimed Exocets and it could all have ended very dif- ferently. This is something that needs to be remembered before we all get too carried away. It was after the theatricals were over that Selena Scott and her colleague Michael Nicholson fell flat on their faces. As the guest of honour, Prince Charles, shook hands one by one with members of the cast these two nincompoops kept up a commen- tary of such incompetence that it ought to be shown again as an example of how not to do this kind of thing. For a start, unlike Prince Charles who seemed to know exactly who everyone was, the ITN duo hadn't got a clue. 'All those familiar faces!' gasped Selena, but she couldn't put names to any of them. One man with a beard was said to be John Mills when he clearly wasn't; Denholm Elliot, whom even I can recognise, was called Donald Sinden by Michael Nicholson, but the most in- furiating thing of all was Selena's repeated cry of `If only we could hear what they are saying!', when if the two of them had just kept their mouths shut, we could have heard every single word.
Watching Ibsen with a streaming cold is not the most exhilarating experience in the world. Little Eyolf (BBC1) was introduced to us as a seldom performed masterpiece, or words to that effect, and this again did nothing to raise the spirits. I am always put off by the sight of the Norwegian sitting- room on which the curtain rises. One knows that within these three hideously furnished walls pretty awful things are about to start happening. Sure enough it was not long before the cracks were beginning to show in the relationship between Alfred Allmers (Anthony Hopkins) and his wife Rita. What with a crippled son and a sinister old ratcatcher (played by Dame Peggy Ashcroft) I felt little incentive to stick it out to the end and clutching my box of mansize tissues stumbled up to bed.
Somewhat recovered the following day I did manage to stay up for John Willis's long documentary Alice: a Fight for Life (Yorkshire). This was a diatribe against the manufacturers of asbestos, following in the footsteps of a World in Action on the same subject shown a week or so ago. Willis used shock tactics to make his case against the chief villains Turner and Newall. There were so many healthy faces reduced to liv- ing skeletons, so many tearful relatives that it was impossible not to become highly in- dignant about the apparent indifference of these profiteers to what was happening. Both programmes have pointed out that the dangers of asbestos have been known since as long ago as 1918, yet we go on making the stuff. I don't usually like these televi- sion shock horror exposes but this was an exception, as for once the indignation was justified. Turner and Newall did not see fit to appear but there will be a studio post mortem next Tuesday.
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