Televis io n
Gossiping
Richard Ingrams
At the Spectator's lavish 150th birthday party at the Lyceum last week I found myself bearded by the overpowering figure of Mr Robin Day. It was high time he said that I exposed the crying scandal of the age — namely that Clive James, the burly Australian award winning television critic was making regular appearances on the new LWT programme Saturday Night People. How could a critic, he spluttered combine two roles? As a fairly regular performer on the telly myself — in a blatant attempt to buy me off, the BBC recently invited me onto Call My Bluff — I cannot share the indignation of the blustering, bow-tied and boring Day. All, it seems to me, that Clive James debars himself from doing is penning a long and savage attack on Saturday Night People which makes it all the more important that I myself should do so. Despite the demise, many years ago, of Ned Sherrin's programmes, That Was The Week That Was and Not So Much A Programme, from time to time the television companies still feel a faint urge eyery so often to provide something gossipy and satirical late at night on a Saturday or a Sunday. Saturday Night People is the latest thing in this line, with three resident 'wits' reminiscent of Sher rill's team: Russell Harty, Janet StreetPorter and the burly Australian himself. The aim of the producer Barry .C.ox seems to be to create a kind of television gossip column, a worthy enough ambition. But he has already come up against the same problem as Sherrin, namely that gossip tends to be defamatory, personal and biased and is therefore something Which television, bound by law to be balanced', cannot cope with. Cox is now in hot water as a result of some remarks made by chubby New Statesman-person Christopher Hitchens about the Official Secrets trial.
But this is not the only trouble with the Show, which is, not to mince words, the most awful dog's breakfast. On Saturday, for example, we had a number of items every single one of which was a flop or a bore. Mr Andrew Alexander, a .normally Witty man, appeared — his hair apparently dyed for the occasion — to launch another attack on that already well punctured target, the Quangoes. Nothing very bold or original about that. Then Cockney mouthpiece Janet Street-Porter, she of the orange locks, had a go at the well known psychiatrist and pseud R.D. Laing. .anyone deserves a good bashing it is this phoney Scotch shrink. But why attack him on the grounds that he has pst produced a long-playing record and IS writing an advice column in a g,lossy new women's magazine? Such activities do not necessarily invalidate his opinions, however much they might be frowned on by the Harley Street brigade. Then it was the turn of the burly award winner to refer to two new books — a children's story by Jim Slater and a work called The Track to Bralgu which has been described by its publisher, Mr Tom Maschler, as a work of genius and has alledgedly been written by one of Mr James's compatriots, an Australian aboriginal named Banumbir Wongar. It Was difficult to see why James was referring to the book unless it was to give a helping hand to Mr Maschler, who is, I believe, his own publisher. I was interested to see next day however in the Sunday Times that there is indeed a story attached to this book, i.e. it is widely sus. pected of being completely bogus. In View of the fact that the name of Mr Wongar's Czech agent Sreten Bozic means Happy Christmas in Serbo-Croat, there would appear to be good grounds for believing this to be the case. The fearless Mr James however made no reference to the doubts that had been cast on the bona fides of Messrs Wongar and Bozic, which made the item look a bit pointless. Perhaps the libel reader thought it all looked a bit dicey. So much for fearless and outspoken television.
Previous page
