How embarrassing
Simon Hoggart
The Summer of ... Love, 1967 (BBC2, Saturday) was the first in a series about famous summers. Golly, it was cringemaking. It took the celebrated era entirely on its own terms, or else on the terms laid down by the tabloid press, neither of which bore much resemblance to any reality I remember. The best thing was the voiceover, apparently performed by Chris Morris at his most mock-sonorous, as in ‘a new menace stalks the streets of Britain’, when he reported on some terrifying drug he’d just made up for The Day Today. Cliché followed cliché, like rocks sliding down scree. ‘The summer of love shook society to its very foundations!’ the narrator intoned, and I thought to myself, no it didn’t, it just got a lot of publicity and I wore some very silly shirts. ‘All the rules came off, all the brakes came off ... the floodgates were unlocked ... a youthquake had hit Britain,’ he went on. ‘Having a washing machine was not satisfying any more!’ Oh, puleeze, as Youth says today.
It came as something of a surprise to discover that the narrator was Bill Nighy, possibly Britain’s coolest actor, but after a moment’s thought, all was clear: he was performing it as his own private joke. Handed this clunky, rattling script, he had decided to ham it up and declaim the words — as if they made sense. The effect, which I suspect was not intended by the producers, was richly comic. How can you possibly talk about the ‘anti-establishment rock ’n’ roll spirit’ when you are about to interview Tony Blackburn? And how antiestablishment can you be when the loudest cheerleaders for this non-existent revolution included Lord Steel, Lord Rees-Mogg and Lord Birt (who, I was diverted to learn, had accompanied Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull in the famous helicopter dash to meet Moggie and the Archbishop, and had spent much of the journey with Ms Faithfull’s backside pushed into his face while she and her swain sported with each other. Under the doctrine of producer choice, he’d have been obliged to tap her buttocks and ask if they had a budget number for that).
There were some fine moments. I had forgotten, until I saw him denouncing pirate radio stations (‘They’re stealing copyright, they are endangering ship-toshore radio, and lives could be at risk’), just how alarmingly Anthony Wedgwood Benn’s eyes bulged at the time he was Postmaster-general. Nearly 40 years later the eyes appear to have retracted, and he has once again re-invented his role in history. ‘I told the prime minister, I am not going to introduce a bill called The Prohibition of Broadcasting Bill. I won’t do it. I refuse!’ This heroic stand for freedom appeared to end, however, when the measure was retitled the Marine Offences Bill.
There was footage of the ‘Technicolour Dream’ held at Alexandra Palace, which I briefly attended, and where I met a woman called Yoko Ono, some time before John Lennon did. Had a spark flashed between us, history might have been different, but sadly what she was doing was very boring and I hoped never to see her again. As for the Beatles’ ‘All You Need Is Love’, have there ever been five more meaningless words? Lennon needed love, all right, but he also needed an entire New York apartment to store his fur coats.
Nobody pointed out that just one year after the youthquake hit the world, rocking the establishment to the core of its being, Americans elected Richard Nixon and three years later we picked Ted Heath. Social change comes about for the most part through money and technology. Young people had more money to spend and wanted to spend it on amusing and attractive things, while cheerfully denouncing other people’s wealth. The contraceptive pill meant that a few more women felt secure enough to sleep with their boyfriends. The Rolling Stones may have created ‘a moral panic surrounding their openly sexual stance’, but chiefly in the newspapers.
Greed continued and wars went on in spite of the best efforts of Flower Power. Drugs made some people more mellow, but they made others steal in order to buy them. In other words, the summer of 1967 had little to do with the changes we have seen, though I thought David Steel might have got it right when he said ‘We had a more generous approach to other people, and to other people’s problems.’ Maybe that has lasted, in some ways if not others. But it wasn’t an earthquake.
Spiral (BBC4, Sunday) was a French serial policier. It was fun to compare with a British psychological drama such as Cracker. The people were prettier and more stylish, and I was struck by the recent immigrant who read Balzac for fun. You can’t imagine that happening here. ‘Find any weapons in his flat, sergeant?’ ‘Nah, just the usual, boss, most of Jane Austen, some early Arnold Bennett ...’ I was also struck by the pitiless depiction of the effects of violence. The autopsy of the dead girl, and the shots of her battered face, were some of the most horrifying things I’ve seen on television. If it made a tough detective faint, should we have seen it on our screens?
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