Television
The sweets of victory
Peter Levi
The symbol of the European football championship is a cute little comic rabbit like something on a little boy's T-shirt: it appears at times in the top left corner of the television set. If I had known that, I would have looked for it and all would be well, but when I arrived late at night in the nearly deserted tavern of a remote Greek village, intent on doing my best for this column, it appeared to me the Greeks were watching cricket, a phenomenon worth investigating. Actually it was the European football championships played on vividly bright grass. The only variation I spotted in several evenings was that later still at night they watch an endless American series about enormous and angry-looking Zulus, which they call Tsaka (that is, Chaka).
This is all part of the bourgeoisification of provincial Greece, of course, but it has had no bad result. At the first wail of lagouto and klarino under the trees, televi- sion was turned off. Admittedly the players were very old indeed: one was said to be 107. After vespers a local photographer was explaining to an old verger lady who had a secret smile that a certain holy cave she knew and he had photographed was going to be on television next Friday at six, or else the other Friday, so she could watch out for it, or she might check the program- me in the papers. That implies a robust attitude to television and a place in it for popular subjects. The emissions are brief and bad, but everyone watches them, and checking the programmes is only a last resort. Greek television is much better than it once was, though the improvement is too slow, of course. It is curious how the television set in the empty tavern seems to distill all the ageless boredom of provincial life.
When I got home our television set had broken for the first time in 20 years, but my stepson produced a new one which took two people to carry within about an hour, just in time for the end of the Eurofootball with the rabbit (ITV). The photographers of the world were running about at the end faster than the footballers, so we were told. The Russians made a few simple mistakes like missing a penalty, and they lost. I have never seen such a sullen-looking and de- jected bunch. The Dutch seemed really happy and innocent about winning, they all kissed their coach with sweet formality. Personally I hope they win for ever. Prizes in life like football championships should go to the kind of people who enjoy t,hem, just like life peerages. I am sorry the English lost, but can I be alone in feeling some relief that our hooligans were at least not beaten by their hooligans? The tennis commentators are much too connoisseur- ish and critical of the players for my taste. I preferred Tsaka to the tennis, but the Dutch were so jolly winning that I watched them twice.
The news on our new screen is more alarming than ever. Now that their faces are life-sized the untrustworthy sound and look even sillier than ever. Even my confidence in Mr Hurd, that Rolls-Royce of public life, was a little shaken, and the Sight of the Pope saying that those who died at Malthausen enriched this world by their sufferings was simply nauseating. The identikit picture of the motorway murderer looked incredibly evil. But Ronald Eyre's Russell Harty memorial programme (BBC 2) looked worth all the many thousands of Pounds such things cost to produce. It was a good idea, and moving in its way. Russell Harty had a skin too few. He once wrote me a badly hurt letter about a rude remark I made in this column about Russell someone else, who wore horrible scarlet trousers and talked drivel about the stars. But Russell Harty had the unusual and most interesting talent of revealing and exploring more and more of himself as well as his subject. So he grew on one, and one liked him more and more all his life, more With every performance. I was so glad to think about him again. He was three years Younger than I was, and we cannot afford to • lose people like him. There are no People like him, I am afraid.
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