Summary justice
James Delmgpole
was the week before Christmas and I was getting kind of agitated: how would I find the time to watch all the seasonal preview tapes I'd ordered? What about the programmes I wanted to watch but which weren't available in advance? Would Liz get snappy with me if I asked her to order
some more? Why was I wasting so much worry-energy on a column that pays diddly squat and gets read by only about 60,000 people anyway?
Why indeed. It was then that I had the most brilliant idea. 'Sod it,' I thought. 'I'm not going to bother watching anything. I'll just make it all up. It's not like anyone reads this column for the television, anyway.'
So what I thought I'd do is go through the television schedules and, using my skill and judgment plus whatever facts I could glean from the Radio Times, just slag off programmes I don't like the look of. Or use them as a springboard for the usual solipsistic digressions.
Micawber (ITV 1, Christmas and Boxing Day). Unquestionably, the most puke-makingly dreadful programme of the season and quite possibly the whole year. Why? I'd have thought it was bloody obvious. It was inspired by one of Dickens's most annoying (and, God knows, the competition is stiff) characters; it stars David Jason; it was written by the man who does Only Fools And Horses; and according to the RT 'not an awful lot happens and things do get ponderous at times'. In other words, it's the drama equivalent of what TV Go Home (E4, Tuesday) would call 'Plebdazzlc Showtime'.
Only Fools And Horses (BBC 1, Christmas Day). Look, instead of clogging up our screens these people should be doing something useful, like participating in suicide assaults on Tora Bora to flush out any surviving al-Qa'eda.
Jonathan Creek (BBC 1, Boxing Day). Same applies to you, David Renwick, with your life-wastingly convoluted plotlines. And you, girl-haired comedy man.
I Love Christmas (BBC 2, Christmas Eve). I hate programmes called I Love . .
Arena: The Private Dirk Bogarde (BBC 2, Boxing Day). A couple of years before he died, I spent about an hour chatting to Dirk Bogarde. And the bugger is, apart from discovering that he thought Ecstasy and the club scene were a good thing (though he claimed never to have done E himself), I can't remember a single thing about it. He was jolly charming, though.
Alan Rickman, Philip Glass, Lou Reed, Neil Kinnock, Angela Carter, Iris Murdoch, Harrison Ford, John Travolta, Sting, Julie Christie, Diana Rigg and Jon Bon Jovi. These are among the other famous people I've met but about whom I can remember little of great import The most horrid was an actor called Bernard Hill. The most charming was probably David Suchet, which is nice to know, isn't it? I mean, when you see him being brilliant in things like The Way We Live Now, it seems too much to hope that so talented an actor could also be a radiantly lovely human being. But he is. He reminds me quite a lot of John Gross, tapes. Anyway — you'll think I'm being sarcastic here but I'm not — I don't think J.K. Rowling is at all underrated. In fact, I get really cross when literary snobs airily declare how indebted she is to E. Nesbit or how she's not a patch on Philip Pullman. So you're saying, like, that everything Shakespeare wrote was purely the product of his imagination? The point about J.K. Rowling is that she does what she does as well as it could be done. I feel a bit had about saying this with a degree in English literature, and when I'm half way through the gohsmackingly wonderful The Human Stain, but I think the Potter series has given me more page-turning pleasure than almost anything I've read. Especially, the last one where it got really dark. And I'm not just saying that in the hope that she reads this and gives me an exclusive interview. Though obviously, if you want to, Joanne, you can.
Dad's Army: The Lost Episodes (BBC 2, Friday). Whenever you're tempted to doubt that there was ever a golden age of television, all you need to do is watch Dad's Army. Particularly the moment where Captain Mainwaring says: 'Don't tell him, Pike.' Maybe it's so assured because it dates back to an era when we were all united by common cultural assumptions. Maybe being able to laugh at Dad's Army should be one of Mr Blunkett's new immigration requirements.
Finally, a Happy Christmas to everyone, apart from the people who want to call it 'Winterval', 'Holidays' and other bollocks euphemisms, and the chef and staff at Club Gascon, who gave me my most miserable dining experience ever a few months back: may mutant cockroaches invade their kitchen! And an especially Happy Christmas to the people in the BBC's tape service department who — and Liz agrees — are always friendly, laid-hack and more helpful than one would ever dare dream in this evil age of jobsworthiness, corporate-speak and mindless bureaucracy.
Oh, and thanks to all the people who wrote me nice letters. If I haven't replied, it's not because I don't love you but because Fm crap, You can email me on JamesdeWdireon.co.uk — but no nastiness or spike you.
Previous page
