Television
It's a washout
Martyn Harris
The highlight of any Wimbledon, and true test of a commentator's mettle, is the complete day's washout, though this should ideally start in the middle of a tense singles battle between two top seeds rather than, as this year, on the first day of the tourna- ment.
Harry Commentator was our carpenter for this event, as Frank Bough used to say, and Harry filled the void brilliantly with a fine drizzle of factoids laid over the usual mournful shots of uneaten strawberries and unclaimed silver trophies. It was only the 26th time in 100 years we had lost an entire day's play, Harry told us, and his heart went out to those who had travelled hun- dreds, even thousands of miles. We should console ourselves with the thought of poor Mats Wilander, pulled out with knee injury, just as in rainy days of yore we used to dissipate our grief in contemplation of Bjorn Borg and his grojn strajn.
Leaving 'this wet Wimbledon' for a moment we went over to 'last week at East- bourne', where Pam Shriver and Martina Navratilova (`the old firm of Shrive and Nay', as Harry called them) were chatting away in the kind of guest-house bedroom which has peach nylon sheets that spark with static and a complimentary Kit-Kat in the puddle beside the electric kettle. Both Shrive and Nay now have the stitched-on squint that goes with 25 years of serving into the sun and the unforced fluency of a thousand Harry Carpenter interviews. Shrive asked if Nav remembered that sec- ond set battle with Christine Truman that was interrupted by rain in '74. Nav said did she ever.
Harry plucked us away then to consider the really big question of the tournament, which was whether Andre Agassi would wear white socks. Agassi has taken time off from his Nike commercials to appear at Wimbledon this year, though it is not cer- tain whether 'this baby-faced exponent of rock 'n' roll tennis' (Harry Commentator) will condescend to win it.
`What do you expect from Wimbledon?' Harry asked him searchingly.
`I expect to go there nervous and excit- ed,' said Andre.
`And what will Wimbledon expect from you?'
`About the same,' said Andre, mystifying- ly. `But Wimbledon was there years before me and will be there for years afterwards.'
Which seemed to be a safe bet, and so Andre went off to work on his squint, and Harry Commentator to his carpentry box.
Backtracking to last Tuesday's This Is It (Channel 4, 9 p.m.), I want to congratulate Paul Morley on his masterclass in making a television programme about nothing at all. The series is sort of about architecture, I think, but its main purpose is clearly to allow Morley to travel the world staying at nice hotels. So why not make a programme about nice hotels?
We saw Morley being woken up in bed by a call from his producer (this happens in every Morley programme), we saw him talking about making the programme (ditto) and we saw him ineffectually hang- ing out in a hotel disco (ditto, ditto). Final- ly we saw him rambling amiably through the fog of a major breakfast hangover. `You think I've got a hangover? Listen. I'm a professional. . . . '
His guide to good hotels came down to marking the salt cellars out of ten: 'When I was in my late teens I'd have given this condiment set two out of ten. Now I give it eight out of ten. Does this mean I am a bad person? I think it means 1 am going to die. We are all going to die. And we all deserve some ease, some bliss before we die. I am going to give this condiment set ten out of ten.' So if a programme is spiralling out of control then play on the rumpled and vul- nerable charm of the presenter and if all else fails bid for the tragic dimension by talking about death. I'll give it five.
`This is port, you prat, it's supposed to be passed to the left.'
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