Hard news
Richard ingrams
Dr Stiles Dean Exell MD of Salem, New York, has done something to improve the image of America in my eyes. He writes to tell me that he shares my interest in gardening and also in Bach. He and his wife, he says, have been going to an annual Bach festival at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania for four decades. Dr Exell is also a keen reader of the Spectator, his only blind spot being that he does not enjoy Auberon Waugh's column. 'Does he own part of the journal?' he asks, 'I see no other reason why he gets space.'
One of the things the doctor likes about the Spectator is the way in which from time to time we columnists refer to one another's work, instancing my recent rebuke of the great and good Alan Watkins. This week I feel inclined to take up some remarks of my columnar and Berkshire neighbour Jeffrey Bernard, who wrote so brilliantly in the last issue about what it would be like to be a woman, picturing himself with plunging tights on his way to the York Minster, and conveying in a few poignant paragraphs all the vulnerability of womanhood.
We are so used to hearing that women get a raw deal having to sit at home while the men are living it up among the bright lights that it demands more than a little courage to put the other side. However, all I want to say is that there are times when it would be quite nice to be a woman and sit at home, and that one such occasion is the fortnight of Wimbledon. Last year, when I observed that part of the pleasure of watching tennis as opposed to most other sports on the television is that you see the whole picture and not just fragments, the remark was considered so profound that it was quoted in the leader column of The Times. This year there is unfortunately no Times to relay my banal comments to a wider audience and Spectator readers alone will be privileged to be told that one of the advantages of watching Wimbledon on a black-and-white set is that you actually see the ball and the white lines of the court. So much for all those who claim that colour television comes into its own during Wimbledon fortnight. It does not. All that happens is that you can tell that the grass is green.
If I were a woman I should be able to add a few more pertinent points based on a week's solid viewing. As it is, I saw only brief snatches, though I was lucky enough on Saturday afternoon to catch the defeat of McEnroe, described by the asinine bespectacled Harry Carpenter as 'a minor sensation'. For those of us who have been cast into deep gloom by a number of legal decisions in recent weeks it was comforting to see at least one loud-mouth getting his comeuppance.
Meanwhile the BBC have been commemorating the 25th anniversary of their television news service. I notice how these anniversaries are always dragged up during the summer months when nothing much is happening apart from the usual run of repeats. I would not be surprised if during the next month or so the BBC were to show a lot of old nine o'clock news bulletins just to fill up the schedules. Amid all the backpatting it would be as well to remember that whatever it is the BBC puts on it is hardly ever news, When Mr Alan Protheroe the BBC News Editor appeared on Granada's State of the Nation the other day he talked merrily away about how the BBC would treat this or that exposure. But from the bulletins one gets little impression that the BBC men are digging away trying to find out what is going on. The reports are just tame compilatiom which anyone given a few old copies of the Daily Telegraph and news agency stories could string together. The rest is either 'hot sunny weather brought the motorists out in force' (summer) or 'snow-ploughs were ow at dawn' (winter), with assorted funeral; thrown in. Nowadays a special emphasis is given to the activities of royalty. Nic bulletin is complete without a royal visit to somewhere or the heir to the throne addressing a gathering of box-wallahs. All of this applies equally to News at Ten, sometimes thought to be better than the BBC, but in reality not much different. The only fun with ITN is to be had from waiting to see if Reggie Bosanquet will manage to get through the programme without falling over his lips. I have been waiting patiently every night to hear him trying to say Navratilova — but they usually give that bit tc Sandy or Anna, blast them.
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