Will Waspe
te'w of us can have such cause to be grateful for i\le miracles of television as the former ational Hunt jockey Brough Scott, now a rtleniber of ITV's team of racing commentators and a very good and personable one. Scott is °"so racing correspondent of the Sunday Times, aOd it is unfortunate that the ITV job doesn't ays take him to the important meetings \v ere a racing correspondent ought to be. No r'rohlem, though. Last Saturday, for instance, cott was off up north for ITV but he had -his 0W11 television monitor-set tuned in to the BBC iswhich was .covering Goodwood, the meeting reported next day (as any of us might have "clie) for the Sunday Times.
The Rantzen Beat
l'Oothy Esther Rantzen, who is the front-girl of 841,HBC-tv show called That's Life — on which Was once a background-girl when it was oWn as The Braden Beat — is evidently :.etting a bit pushed for material in her capacity .a consumer ombudswoman. Last Saturday she as solemnly ticking off a firm of monumental asons for approaching a widow about a
headstone for her husband's grave only a couple Of days after he had been put in it. (When else, viewers might have wondered, would be the best time to sell someone a headstone?) A week or two ago ago she similarly berated a roofing company at some length over the sort of invoicing error that any firm is apt to make in these computerised days and is always good for a chortle — but Miss Rantzen gave it a cruelly sinister edge by going on about the distress the wrong invoices had caused to an eighty-year-old woman. Doubtless she didn't know that her sob-sister reference to the eighty-year-old woman was news to the roofing company, which had dealt throughout with the old lady's sprightly son.
Incidentally, I have been wondering about the presence in Miss Rantzen's show of the ageing odd-ode man, Cyril Fletcher, who still retains a talent to amuse at least himself. His spot in The Braden Beat was occupied by the rather more urbane Ronald Fletcher. Is the substitution due to some bizarre mix-up in the bookings department?
Back on-stage?
Though she is quite as much at home on the stage as on the screen, American actress Lee Remick has declined all offers to work in the theatre since she took up residence here a few years ago. Rumour has it, however, that US impresario Hal Prince has persuaded her back to the boards and that she will be replacing Jean Simmons, who is to leave the cast of A Little Night Music.
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