Psalms of David
AFTERTHOUGHT JOHN WELLS
David Frost, as everyone would agree, is a very nice man. And he must by now have be- come accustomed to the fact that his name in- spires violent emotional reactions, causing some to swoon away in delight and others to bare their teeth and to snarl with ungovern- able rage. But it is hard to see what he can have done to deserve the treatment he receives in Frost: Anatomy of a Success, written by Wallace Reyburn and published by Macdonald at 25s. I should add that mean-minded persons expecting an Anatomy of Frost after the man- ner of Rembrandt, with the pallid Dave recum- bent on a slab, carved up by a grave author and laid open to the public, are in for a dis- appointment. Instead, the author plays the role of the obsequious and acquisitive monk at a shrine frequented by the superstitious : he , persuades us to pay him our 25s, coyly un- covers what be claims is the nude Frost, and then attempts to calm our outraged disappoint- ment by ludicrously exaggerating the sanctity of the cadaver and covering it with pious kisses.
`He is the best television interviewer in the country . . . Cabinet ministers, such as George Brown and Denis Healey, Prime Ministers (Ian Smith), religious leaders (the Archbishop of Canterbury), kings (Hussein of Jordan) showed n themselves willing, eager . . .'—the babble of unctuous justification continues, I like to imagine, in a bumbling Peter Sellers' Indian accent—'He is dedicated to making television a more worthwhile thing . . . as a person he is thoroughly likeable. Kind, generous, thought- ful of others. . . .' The bobbing, gesticulating monk seems to reach for words: 'There is something almost saintly about him.' For a moment the monk hesitates, head on one side, waiting for our approval: then, raising a finger and shaking his head from side to side with a sudden solemnity : 'But he is not a prig. He does not look with disapproval on smoking, drinking, and sex... Perhaps aware of the glint of cynicism in the eye of the Pilgrim, the monk makes a point of drawing attention to one or two tiny short- comings, as if to underline the divine humanity of the blessed one. `John McMillan was en- raged . . . he felt it was a breach of ethics for someone to accept the training facilities of an organisation (Rediffusion) and then go across the road to give the opposition (the BBC That Was The Week) the benefit. "I will not even have his name mentioned in the building" said McMillan.' The monk Reyburn, shrugs, half- closes his eyes and spreads his hands. 'If what he had done was unethical, then there are a lot of people being unethical in all spheres of business, day after day.' Pressing his palms to- gether, he plants another ritual kiss and continues.
He traces some of Frostie's contributions to the book To England With Love to their un- paid and unacknowledged source in the This England column of the New Statesman: naughty, the monk suggests, wagging a fingef at the embalmed Frost, 4. . . but nowhere in To England With Love did the authors go anywhere near approaching the classic example of the Montreal sports writer . . .' the monkish eyebrows flicker upwards in warm reminiscence 'who reprinted someone else's column, and added a final sentence. "I must say I 'hgree with him."' A flash of teeth in an obsequious smile, and the monk devoutly pats the body: David, we see him thinking, would not do a thing like that. Again, he leans for- ward eagerly, catching the Pilgrim's attention when Private Eye scurrilously lampooned him as the Bubonic Plagiarist: 'After the broadcast four hundred people phoned the nec—three in favour, four against, and three hundred and ninety-three to say they wrote the script.' The `satirist-in-chief'- nobly turned the other cheek, forgave them all, and performed in their charity concert. At times the monk appears to be slightly or his head : 'For Oxfam he flew out to India at his own expense on a (one-day) fund-raising trip. His detractors—the guide scowls furiously—`hasten to point out that while he was there he had another talk with John Free- man about joining London Weekend iv, but the interesting thing is'—I emphasise the monk's growl with italics—`that the detractors have not themselves flown to India for Oxfam nor been in the position to enlist Freeman.' But most of the mumbled monologue is devoted to impassioned beatification pure and simple. He lays a hand on Frostie's heart: 'Few know of the time and money he devotes to the after care of prisoners: he has visited Parkhurst and Broadmoor to talk to the inmates. Nobody until now has read about the fact that he sup- ports a family whose father was tragically killed. There are other examples of furtive generosity.' The body on the slab twitches not a muscle, but it cannot be too rewarding trying to be furtively saintly with the monk Reyburn about.
The peroration in the shrine has something charmingly ironic about it. 'Frost is the -hottest property in television at the moment'—hence presumably the 25s admission fee—`and the outcome is that he has hangers-on the way other people have mice. . . . Constantly they hover around Frost. They are not very reward- ing company. How he puts up with them, day in, night out, Frost alone knows.' Indeed, why Frostie does not rise from the slab and fell the obsequious monk to the floor with a single blow is in itself a miracle. It is perhaps natural that success should gild his curls with an unearthly halo, but such abject idolatry can only in the end do him a disservice. And why are we, as his fellow-satirists, quoted in the book as calling him 'David' instead of the more familiar `Frostie' or 'Gypsy Dave'? Give us back our Frostie, the nice conservative showman we all know and love! Wallace Reyburn's last book, about the All Blacks, was called The Unsmiling Giants. Surely it would have been much more to Frostie's own satirical taste to call this one The Smiling Dwarf, with the sub- title Seriously, Though, He's Doing a Grand lob.
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