Roundabout
Foodcast
By KATHARINE WHITEHORN
TELEVISION is rapidly be- coming something that In the popular Mind, the BBC is thought of as providing warm orange juice and a currant bun, while ITV are more likely to raise Canada Club and caviar; but in fact this is not so Four- star programmes are equally rare on either— Wish You Were Here, an ATV programme at
Christmas time, rated smoked salmon sandwiches
and champagne, presumably because it was a programme designed to take the beam out of the hotel trade, and felt it had better float the mote out of its own eye as a precaution. And the BBC programme Town Forum used to pro- duce the best of which the town it was visiting was capable, the wines being chosen by the pro- ducer himself. Animal, Vegetable or Mineral?, too, was a programme the success of which was
largely attributed to the fact that the evening would begin with an excellent dinner at Beoty's, the resultant goodwill being packed into a fast car and whisked back to the studios before it could evaporate.
But these are special cases. The sort of enter- tainment you are offered for more run-of-the- mill occasions will depend, for a start, on how you yourself are rated. Newcomers are often puzzled that they seem to get dinner for an hour's work on one occasion, canteen coffee for an all-day stint on another. The reason is that the longer day's work probably puts them in the 'artiste' rather than the VIP class; artistes are the home team, and considered lucky even to get a lemon at half-time. Again, a programme containing very eminent people may lay on some- thing splendid for all concerned: the thing is based, in the BBC, on the system of the Hospital- ity Room booked for each programme, and if the programme rates something really fancy, the chances are that the hospitality will be, too. And anything at the Television Centre will be better than anything at Lime Grove, although they are only a few hundred yards apart; though for straight drinking Lime Grove has quite a good reputation.
One respect in which BBC and ITV practice differs is in the conduct of the Preliminary Meal— it is surprisingly the case that whereas the BBC recognises the propriety of stuffing a man's face while you pick his brains, ITV in general does not, and on ATV, for example, the Comptroller of Programmes has to OK even a provisional lunch. (Free Speech, however, begins with cham- pagne at the morning conference in Albany, and an excellent lunch is laid on before the pro- gramme.) In sound broadcasting it is generally acknow- ledged that the best meals go with consul- tations—that asking the BMA what it thinks of Mrs. Dale's Diary (to name but one genuine instance) will rate more wine and glossier ser- vice than anything handed out to actual per- formers.
Sound broadcasting is, in general, more resist- ant to wine than television : The Critics, for ex- ample, have a lunch at which the flowers are superb, the food so-so, the whisky and beer unlimited; some critics find that the whisky makes them too sleepy for sparkling back-chat, and they avoid the beer from a reluctance to spend the afternoon repeating the long, trip to the gents', tripping over the cables as they go. One member of the programme habitually brings his own wine; he was astonished, not so long ago, to be faced with a request to pay corkage. On Woman's Hour, they have a beer-drinking tradi- tion, usually accompanied by cold pie and salad.
Wednesday Magazine produces a three-course hot meal, and with wine at that. There seems, as far as I can make out, to be little distinction be- tween one programme and another on grounds of the programme's content : About Religion, which is filmed in what feels like the early morning, has Obviously long since ceased to have any illusions about clerics as such, and provides a Pentecostal hair of the dog collar to start the discussions off. Drinks before programmes are, surprisingly, harder to come by than drinks after—or perhaps not surprisingly, when I remember Brendan Behan's eruption on to Panorama. On the Tonight programme, where the sandwiches were always said to curl in direct proportion to the amount of rage Donald Baverstock had vented in the course of the programme, Randolph Churchill is supposed to be the only man ever to get a drink before he went on.
Like any other gastronomic guide, a Guide to TV and Radio would have to be constantly checked to be kept up to date: programmes, even whole networks, decline. Granada, for ex- ample, began by being one of the more lavish of the companies, but hospitality has dcclined under the impact of successive economy cam- paigns, and now performers on feature pro- grammes usually either take themselves to the canteen (good) or content themselves with the indifferent coffee and sandwiches provided in the conference room. No drink : in cases where the Producer deems it essential for nerve-restoring Purposes, a single drink may be prescribed; other- wise, performers have to buy their own at the New Theatre pub—or let the unfortunate producer Pay for them out of his own pocket.
The only knovvn exception to this rule in recent t;tues was the programme Who Goes Next?: for titi8 a lunch with appropriate wines was served. he reason is alleged to be that the panel, which included such experienced TV hands as Richard Crossman, Malcolm Muggeridge and Peter Thorneycroft, threatened to strike if they were pot treated in the manner to which they had cecoMe accustomed.
The real trouble for any programme is to get the maximum amount of goodwill with the Minimum amount of risk : a lapsed Methodist u,'ho was once actually sick during a programme lkbthough the cameras were not on him at time) is only one instance of how lavish enter- :tiling can go wrong. It is even said that one L reasons for Granada's decline is that there _osed to be a bottle in every dressing-room, and nieone once interpreted this as meaning one rttle for each member of a large dance band, .14.th fearful consequences.. . . Lay on the enter- ntnent too soon and the nervous amateur is 874-m1nded and sleepy by the time the pro- angdmme begins; austerely deny him everything, s„e he may be too nervous to speak. Generally e'n aking, the best plan seems to be total abstin- thfe until ten minutes before transmission; and the a very stiff snort to get you into orbit. Until : gastronomic guide comes out, the best plan obably to take a hip flask.
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