Television
Parrot cries
Richard Ingranns
Not content with delivering his weighty report on television, about which I assume little will ever be done, Lord Annan went on the box last week to answer his critics of some length. He did so in the guise ot a university lecturer with various telly moguls ranged in tiers around him. None of these listeners, who included the BBC's present D.irector-General, Sir Charles Curran, and his successor-elect Ian Trethowan, looked haPPy about Annan and laughed at only °Ile of his jokes. Annan, a tall wellPreserved figure of a Cambridge type, could ,11,°t help appearing like a rather patronising oueadmaster addressing the school on .loeech Day. He ticked them off, quite rightly, about sex and violence and accused the BBC, again with justification, of trying to do too much by setting up pointless studios in the regions. I did not detect, however, any sign that Annan recognises the ligers of television. He seems to regard "ie Generation Game as good clean fun rather than the degrading and distasteful affair which it is. He is also keen on a fourth c. hamlet to cater in part for 'minorities'. This is a fashionable parrot cry, based on an as that there are lots of little ruPs of Tiddly-Winkers or Campaigners tor Real Potato Crisps bursting to get onto ."e box. I doubt whether this is so or even if It is whether they should be pandered to. In aAnY ease to propose a new channel of the :1,11nan kind is tantamount to admitting that "le BBC has failed to do its job. „ Did Lord Mountbatten know in advance 'Bat he was going to be on This Is Your Life? 11.31Y firm answer is no. He clearly looked a glum at being caught unprepared for such an event especially as most of the war veterans in the studio were wearing their rit_ledals and 'Dicky' would no doubt like to nave shown that he has more medals than are them put together. Apart from that he ha of every right to be pleased, as seldom has si.:3 much praise been heaped on one human ead. A stream of battered survivors from 11e disaster or another hobbled in at ‘"4.1Tionn's command to pay their respects — trIzzled seadogs, gnarled prisoners from „hangi jail — all joined their voices in the U hymn of praise. Only one old boy, Primed to relate a nautical anecdote, said rather pointedly, 'I remember very well at happened as I've heard you tell the sit°rY so often!' Throughout it all Mountbat;e, n maintained a stiff upper lip, though I Mink I saw him brush away a tear when an Old film was shown of Vera Lynn belting out We'll meet again'. Mountbatten is obviusly a tremendous shit but, as Dick Emery wfrould say, I like him. At least he refrains °In any 'Country-going-to-the-dogs' talk
of the type indulged in by most admirals of his age.
My ancient television set finally came into its own on Sunday for that excellent Peter Sellers film, Two Way Stretch, shown in black and white but also in such a way that it filled only the centre of the screen thus avoiding my built-in Mental Health Protection Mechanism which causes the picture slowly to contract from the bottom upwards the longer the set is kept switched on. However the mood of gaiety engendered by Sellers, Lionel Jeffries and Irene Handl was quickly dispelled by the last quarter of an hour • of Michael Frayn's documentary about Vienna. I have to confess that I couldn't understand a word of what Frayn was saying but the sight of his gaunt rangy figure discoursing in front of depressing paintings by Klimt and Schiele to the accompaniment of gloomy Gustav Mahler's morbid music, was enough to induce a feeling of profound spiritual emptiness. Frayn, I think, was trying to convey some philosophical messages about the nature of reality and illusion, but what came across very vividly was a sense of lunacy and decay.
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