Television
Bails of plasticine
Alexander Chancellor
It is both frustrating, and in a way a relief, that my deadline for this column precedes the eve-of-wedding television interview with Prince Andrew and Miss Sarah Ferguson. It is frustrating because it would have given me something amusing to write about. It is a relief because I don't think I could have borne to have written about it. The royal family are at the moment completely out of control; and, to my surprise, I find this very upsetting.
I am absolutely in favour of the royal family. I have always liked the way they keep their heads down, avoid controversy, shun jokes, and conceal whatever persona- lities they may have. Now the only truly 'royal' member of the royal family is Captain Mark Phillips. When did we last hear of him? The others are all in a state of rebellion. The Princess of Wales dresses up as a policewoman and goes to Annabel's; Prince Edward goes to Westminster Abbey with his arm in a sling; Princess Andrew (as she must by now be called, unless the Queen has already made her Duchess of York) gives a press interview and says: 'A woman should have a trim waist, a good "up top" and enough down the bottom'; and the Queen — yes, the Queen — is reported to despise her prime minister. It simply won't do.
As a prelude to the royal wedding, both ITV and BBC1 decided last Sunday to broadcast debates on the subject of mar- riage. According to the world's most reli- able newspaper, the Sunday Telegraph (and, indeed, according to other news- papers as well), the star of both almost simultaneous programmes was to have been Cosmopolitan's 'agony aunt', Miss Irma Kurtz. She was scheduled to appear at 10.20 p.m. on The Jimmy Young Televi- sion Programme (ITV) and at 10.35 on Rabbi Julia Neuberger's Choices (BBC1). As Miss Kurtz is not married, has never been married and does not intend ever to be married, she seemed a funny sort of expert for both television channels to select. Anyway, Jimmy Young seems to have dropped her. He had a lady from a polytechnic in Sheffield instead and an Anglican bishop of the broadminded sort who talked a great deal about love. But Miss Kurtz was to be seen on Choices talking in favour of marriage with at least as much enthusiasm as (only with rather greater realism than) the bishop.
Rabbi Neuberger is rather a strange- looking woman, but she conducts a debate very well. She intervenes as little as possi- ble and whenever she does so, does so to effect. Jimmy Young, on the other hand finds it difficult to stop talking and is for ever eager to bring somebody else into the conversation, just to keep things moving. He would be better confined to the radio.
As this is my last television column for the Spectator, 1 must report that the great men who run Granada Television Rentals did not ignore my plea in the issue of 5 July for someone to come and sort out my television aerial. Mr Bill Andrewes, the managing director, wrote me a letter tell- ing me that the best television aerial company in the world was called 'Tee Vee Aerials' and that they would be in touch. Indeed they were, and last Monday their representative came round and announced that the problem with my television recep- tion was neither the set, nor the aerial, but the chimney.
It is the chimney that is falling over, and the aerial with it. There is nothing to be done about the reception until I get it repaired. So I must now apologise not only to Granada but also to the aerial com- panies I have so unjustly abused.
It is time to be off. The editor, as a farewell present, has given me a letter from a gentleman in Brunei, Mr G. T. Ross. `Chancellor's effusions', he says, 'are little balls of brown plasticine which occasional- ly gleam with spit.' From now on I will be throwing my little salivary plasticine balls from across the Atlantic in the direction of a new national daily newspaper called the Independent — and perhaps just the occa- sional ball in this direction as well.
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