Everything but the ball
Simon Hoggart
ast year I noticed that Today at Wimbledon (BBC1), the main programme for people who are out at work during the day but want to catch up in the evening, contained less tennis than ever. There seemed to be a neurotic desire to show anything except tennis. There were cosy chats with experts in the studio, analysis from a man who draws chalk lines on the screen to show you the relationship between a player's shoes and his shoulder blades, lots of vox pops featuring members of the public of the kind for whom life itself seems to be a perplexing mystery, viewers' emails, but precious little tennis. I could almost hear a commissioning editor: 'Look, guys, all our stats show that the majority of the viewing population don't like tennis. Make a nightly programme about Wimbledon, yeah, go for it — but keep down the tennis!'
I wondered whether things would be different on Monday this week, following the defeat of the champion, Lleyton Hewitt. This was, as TA 14/' s presenter, John Inverdale, kept telling us, the greatest upset in the history of the competition. So in the manner of a modern television sports programme, I kept my own statistics. This showed that the greatest upset in the history of the competition had made just over a quarter of the entire show, coming in at 16 minutes and 12 seconds. There were extracts from three other matches, so a total of 29 minutes and 27 seconds was devoted to people on court, playing tennis. To be fair, this did not include the minuscule extracts showing just one point, followed by moody black and white shots of the players, and of course a one-hour programme is really 59 minutes in length. But the fact remains that on the day of the greatest upset in the history of the competition, TAW devoted only half its running time to film of people playing tennis.
Inevitably this disrupts the rhythm of the game; there's no way they could show whole matches in the time they have. But the games are so chopped up that all suspense is lost. If you are cramming the greatest upset in the history of the competition into 16 minutes and 12 seconds, every moment you show will be entirely predictable — you know the lanky Croat is going to win that tie-break and then take Hewitt's service game. It's like watching Psycho with the shower scene at the beginning. Modern television is terrified of losing people's attention; if viewers tuning in to a tennis programme might find tennis tedious, out it comes.
The most wonderfully, exquisitely embarrassing television programme I have ever watched was Bernard's Bombay Dream (Channel 4). Granada had taken the famously foul-mouthed racist comedian Bernard Manning to Bombay to do a couple of shows. The intention seems to have been to show us a more considered, a more courteous and open-minded Manning. It didn't work. To remind us who he was they started with a clip from his club act at home. On coloured people: They think they're English because they're born here. That means if a dog's born in a stable, it's a fucking horse. I've never heard such fucking nonsense.'
And I've never seen anyone look so fucking ill. Manning has diabetes and angina, he's dreadfully overweight, and he's deaf in one ear. His favourite form of dress is massive white underpants, so he looks as if he's been wrapped by the experimental artist Christo, who papers over canyons. I began to feel sorry for him.
The grisly embarrassment began with his acts. In one, at a trendy young person's venue called the Jazz-by-the-Bay club, he got a few laughs (though not for the gag about the Irish mystery tour. 'They had a sweep about where they were going. The driver won £68.' Fatally, he tried to explain it).
We caught Bernard's analysis of the Indian economy: 'There's them that's got fuck all, and them that's got it all, and them that's got it all are going to make sure that them that's got fuck all are going to have fuck all for the rest of their lives.' J.K. Galbraith, thou shouldst be living. . . There was a superbly grisly interview with some posh totty from the Mail on Sunday. Her name was Olivia Stewart-Liberty and she hated his joke about the South African necklacing. (`Tek one off. Yer can't mix cross-ply with radials.') He said he couldn't stand Jo Brand's jokes about Tampax, as if there was any comparison.
The climax came at the Gymkhana Club, where he bombed — a horrible, toe-curling sandpaper-on-your-teeth, chalk-on-the blackboard bombing at which the audience was seen looking away in pain and glum confusion. (Fella goes to the optician. Optician says, "You've got to stop wanking." "Why, will I go blind?" "No, you're upsetting everyone in the waiting room." This joke does not translate culturally.) In the end he was mumbling to himself before shambling off.
Bernard blamed the microphone, and the audience, and anyone but himself. We last saw him on the prom at Blackpool, happy again with the rain and the wind and the tea and the cornflakes. I had to force myself to watch the show, but it was quite brilliant.
Previous page
