After all last week's brouhaha the BBC seemed reluctant to
say goodbye to the Royal Wedding. Successive news bulletins were used to advertise a special BBC video of the ceremony and also to tell us that far more people watched it on the BBC than on ITV. Meanwhile on Sunday there was an hour-long 'highlights' programme with the distinguished broadcaster Mr Alistair Cooke being wheeled in to give the thing a bit more something or other. Mr Cooke is so familiar as a voice telling us that autumn leaves are falling on the banks of the Potomac, or some such colourful detail, that it is always rather disconcerting and even disappointing to see him in the flesh. As it happened he was hard pressed to find anything all that significant to tell us about the wedding. You could see it, he said, either as a religious festival or an aesthetic orgy or as a supreme performance of British theatre.
Having watched the BBC broadcast on the day in rather peculiar circumstances — stuck in General de Gaulle's studio in Bush House as a commentator for National Public Radio, Washington — I was quite interested to see it all again, or rather such bits of it as the BBC chose to select. Theatre, religious festival, aesthetic orgy, be that as it may, the real test of a good wedding is whether it makes you blub and on both occasions I have to say that my eyes were dry. Prince Charles was obviously moved by hearing George Thomas reading the famous passage about charity from St Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians, but I found Mr Thomas's monotonous Welsh bleat irritating, and it doesn't help the rhythm if you translate 'charity' into 'love'. None of the hymns were chosen as 'highlights' which was not surprising as they were an uninspiring lot, though there was one quite effective sequence of television when, to the music of Parry's anthem 'I was glad', a grand old Edwardian chestnut used to great effect at the Coronation service, the camera panned round St Paul's ending with the cross on top of the dome. This was done Without any commentary and without a glimpse of any member of the Royal Family. Although Alistair Cooke found it highly significant that Dissenters and Roman Catholics were officiating at the service he did not refer to the anomaly of the re-unification of poor Lord Spencer with his first wife for the occasion of the marriage. The taking of vows in full view of two People who were divorced introduced an element of humbug into the ceremony Which made it even more difficult for one to find it moving. If ever a door was bolted after the horse had escaped it happened on Sunday when in a World About Us called 'The God that Fled', New Statesman journalist Christopher Hitchens had a mild go at Bernard Levin's favourite guru the Bagwan Rajneesh and his well patronised Ashram at iloona, only to reveal at the end of the Programme that since the film was completed, the Bagwash had done a bunk, although quite why was not made clear. As I said recently when the ITV programme Credo did a series on cults, it is immoral to put anything on the air which promotes the cause of the manifold con-men who are Cashing in on young people looking for a spiritual 'fix' and in so doing are helping to fill the psychiatric wards. To his credit Hitchens mounted an attack of sorts and Showed some unpleasant film of naked Bagwash-followers engaged in assaulting one another in all kinds of different ways, Which utterly confounded Levin's picture of the peaceful Ashram where devoted disciPles plucked pearls of wisdom from the wise Old guru. As a matter of fact one had only to listen to Bagwash for about a minute to realise that he is a terrible phoney, quite apart from the disciples standing at the doorway sniffing the audience as they came In to check that there were no odours likely to offend the Holy Man. Imagine that happening at St Paul's.
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