Television
A-musing
Richard Ingrams unday evenings, traditionally my prime viewing time, are looking up a bit thanks to Great Expectations and the return of To the Manor Born (BBC1). This is a distinct cut above the normal BBC comedy material. There is a witty script by Peter Spence, very strong performances from Penelope Keith and Peter Bowles, with Angela Thorne and others giving stalwart support in the secondary roles. The programme too is mercifully untainted by smut.
To the Manor Born is followed by Mastermind which for some reason I now find mildly riveting. It may be because the questions have got much easier and this makes the viewer think of himself as a fellow competitor, often shouting out the answers ahead of the idiot on the screen. Recently I have been nourishing a fantasy about appearing on Mastermind myself. The difficulty always has been the choice of a special subject. The knack is to pick something quite obscure and reasonably limited in scope (one contender recently was questioned on 'The history of 19th-century Leeds'). At the moment my favourite subject for my forthcoming appearance is 'The life and times of Jeffrey Bernard' with the cross-examination proceeding on these lines: Magnus: And our next contender, please — Richard Ingrams, part-time television critic from near Reading. Mr Ingrams, you have two minutes on the life and times of Jeffrey Bernard starting from — NOW! Although Bernard sometimes affected the style of the working class, he went to a fee-paying school. What was the school? Myself: Pangbourne Nautical College. Magnus: Correct. Bernard wrote a column at one time for Sporting Life. Why was he sacked? Myself: Er . . . for being sick over the editor at a Dinner. Magnus: I'll accept that. In 1979 Bernard went to live near Lam bourn. What pub was he barred from shortly afterwards? Myself (doubtful): The Queen's Arms? Magnus: No, it was the Swan at Great Shefford. The same year Bernard was arrested for non-payment of rates. Where was he detained? Myself: Newbury police station. Magnus: Correct. Bernard has been married four times to date. What was the name of his third wife? Myself: Pass.
And so it goes on. But I am not sure the BBC would allow such an esoteric though fascinating special subject to go forward.
Politicians who have fallen on hard times have a nasty habit nowadays of looking for employment in the telly. Even Jeremy Thorpe tried to get a job as an interviewer with ATV and actually got as far as doing some 'pilot' shows. Then there was Harold Wilson who for one nasty moment looked as if he might take over from Michael Parkinson. The latest would-be telly personality is the ineffable Norman St John Stevas, who talks about the 'Latin Marse' and 'Charing Craws' and who therefore might be expected to pronounce his own name `Stevarse'. However that may be, Norman St John Stevas met the Archbishop of Canterbury on the Michael Parkinson show and the consequence was that Dr Runcie agreed to be interviewed by the former Minister for the Arts on his new BBC show Norman St John Stevas in Conversation. Try as they may, politicians cannot get into the habit of asking questions and listening to answers. They cannot stop themselves making points and hogging the conversation. Ousted from high office, Stevas now seems to have taken upon himself the role of bringing about a union between his own Catholic Church and the C of E, and I was sorry to see old Runcie getting pretty carried away by the idea too, and waffling on like an old sheep about bringing world church leaders together for a religious summit conference. As for the rest of it, it was, alas, only too predictable, e.g. Stevas: Can you think of anything the Church might do in the nuclear sphere? Runcie: We need to get people round the table . . . we need to get them talking. Stevas: And now what about the Brandt Report?
Feeling that I might have been a bit too hard on Brideshead last week I gave it another go on Tuesday and ended up thinking that if anything I had been altogether too kind. It is the most dreadful drag I have ever seen and Ryder and Flyte must be two of the drippiest young bores ever to appear on the screen. I found I kept looking at my watch and thinking it must have stopped, such is the snail-like pace at which the tedious tale unfolds.
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