Television
Peeping David
Wendy Cope
First the good news: a musical friend told me that Tony Cash's series of films for Channel 4, Man and Music: Classical Vienna, is wonderful and not to be missed. I watched 'Beethoven — The Age of Revolution' on Sunday night and am happy to echo this opinion. The bad news is that I have caught on rather late in the day and there are only two programmes left. Next Sunday is late Beethoven and the series ends the following Sunday with Schubert. I'm sorry not to have seen Mozart but I'm sure the programmes will be repeated soon.
Normally I do not take very kindly to advice about what I ought to watch. It is especially unwelcome if is comes from the producer of the programme concerned, who has somehow managed to get hold of my telephone number. But even well- meaning friends are liable to get a flea in the ear about the impossibility of watching everything. The worst thing is when some- one tells me what a pity it is I missed the marvellous programme they saw yester- day. Maybe I could arrange to go and see a tape. Maybe I could, I reply through gritted teeth, but life is short.
Nobody has suggested that the world needs to told about Through the Keyhole (ITV), but I have felt curious about this programme ever since I first saw it adver- tised. Last Friday I remembered to switch it on. Presented by David Frost (Ilello, good evening and welcome to Through the Keyhole'), it takes viewers on guided tours of the homes of famous people, conducted by Loyd Grossman. I saw Loyd Grossman pontificating on some programme a few weeks ago and thought he must be one of those serious Americans, like Michael Ignatieff, who get wheeled on because the British aren't quite serious enough. His association with Through the Keyhole undermines this view.
The programme is really a game-show, with three panellists, whose job it is to guess the name of the home-owner. The first of the two homes in Friday's program- me was, as Grossman said, 'Very, very formal and slightly old-fashioned. The silk moire wallpaper,' he added somewhat offensively, 'is like the lining of an expen- sive box of chocolates.' The clothes in the dressing-room obviously belonged to a well-heeled older woman. I guessed Bar- bara Cartland but changed my mind when I realised that this was not a country house but a flat on the top of a block in central London. Unlike me, the panellists Kenneth Williams, Eve Pollard and Chris Tarrant — had spotted the Coronation chair in the living-room and took very little time to guess that the pad belonged to Margaret, Duchess of Argyll. As the studio audience applauded, the Duchess emerged through an enormous blue and purple keyhole and sat down with David Frost.
`Well, Margaret,' said David, 'they got you.'
`They did. But they didn't get my poo- dle. They didn't get Louis.'
`All of your dogs,' continued the ace interviewer, 'are named after French hair- dressers. Why is that?'
Just in case anyone anywhere wants to know why the Duchess of Argyll names her dogs after French hairdressers, I will tell you. It is because they are French poodles.
Quite sad, really, to see David Frost mixed up in such nonsense. But it must some- times be hard for television personalities to resist the pressures to move downmarket. Will we perhaps, one day, see Michael Ignatieff hosting Blankety Blank? I enjoy imagining it.
The Sunday night play on ITV, Freda Kelsall's The Index Has Gone Fishing, was a heartwarming story about nice people being nice to each other. Prunella Scales played a middle-aged librarian who comes close to a breakdown after the death of her invalid mother. Fortunately the local doc- tor is wise and kind and so are the vicar, the junior librarian and the neighbour across the road. Wisest and kindest of all is the divorced bookseller who has been in love with the heroine for the last ten years. He goes on being in love even when she arrives on his doorstep at 6 a.m. saying, `Have you ever stepped by accident into a pool of sunlight and the smell of fresh bread?' I may sound as if I am sneering but actually I am a sucker for this kind of thing and I loved every minute of it.
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