Television
It ain't necessarily so
Wendy Cope
How many words can you think of that begin with 'I' and have more than ten letters? This was the most appealing of the fund-raising suggestions in last week's TV Times and, since I was supposed to be writing a book review at the time, I immediately followed my irrepressible in- clination to make a list. My impulsiveness was a bit irresponsible because what you are meant to do is find a sponsor first and send the money to Telethon, this weekend's charity shindig on ITV. If mak- ing lists of words isn't your bag, you might like to consider one of the other sugges- tions — sponsored knitting, for instance, or sponsored car-washing, or sponsored lazing about. 'Sponsor the laziest member of your family,' it says, `to stay in bed even longer than usual.'
Sponsored lazing about is an original idea and I can't help wondering what Mrs Thatcher or Mr Hurd would think of it as a way of tempering our individualism (there's another one) with concern for others. It is possible to argue that Jesus would have approved of it. Indeed, his words about the lilies of the field seem, on the face of it, to condone unsponsored lazing about as well. But, as the Prime Minister has pointed out, if we think about Biblical teachings we sometimes come to understand that the real meaning is not what we have always assumed. Love your neighbour as yourself bearing in mind that you sometimes hate yourself. Now and again you even kick yourself. If you take into account the things that sometimes happen to flowers — being trodden on, getting picked, etc — you might want to reconsider the lilies of the field. As for the camel and the eye of the needle, there must be a way of demonstrating that the camel has a chance of getting through, if he gives enough money to voluntary organisa- tions. And what if the camel owns a large house in Hampstead and expresses left- wing opinions? When you bring the Bible into politics, all sorts of fascinating ques- tions arise.
Sunday's edition of Weekend World (ITV) began with an excerpt from Mrs Thatcher's speech and went on to consider important questions about the effect of Thatcherism on our society and values. It left me unsure of the answers but thinking hard, which goes to show what a good programme it was. As it has already
received so much press coverage, I won't linger over it, except to say that Matthew Parris's ability to avoid sententiousness was one of its strengths. And to mention that Harry Enfield, to whom I referred last week, popped up in the film report. It seems that he is more of a comedian than a pop singer and that Loadsamoney is a character as well as a hit record. But perhaps you all knew that already.
On Saturday night ITV screened a film about a detective with an Irish accent, who called himself McGrey. His wife called him Julie. His colleagues called him Maigret and he was, in fact, supposed to be based on the Simenon character. He smoked a pipe and had a sidekick named Lucas. But I couldn't see the point. The plot wasn't by Simenon and if they wanted a vehicle for Richard Harris, they might as well have forgotten the Julie McGrey business and set the whole thing in London or Dublin. Harris's performance was very ham in- deed, a response, perhaps, to the quality of lines like this: 'One thing is definitely certain. Someone is lying.' In one scene he had to say the word 'actor'. The second syllable was long and rhymed with 'bore'. Nobody does that nowadays unless he is messing about. Or so I thought.
I've been looking anxiously at the gram- mar of the preceding paragraph because I am about to mention that I heard Norman Fowler, on News at Ten (ITV), tell an interviewer that 'The number of vacancies have gone up again.' It's a mere mote, of course, and I cannot claim never to have had a beam in my own eye. But we must recognise that modern society is infinitely more complex than that of Biblical times and, besides, if I'd left it out I'd have been stuck for a last paragraph.
'No wonder they can't understand. This is Greece.'
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