Television
Girl talk
Clive Gammon
" There are some happy, fulfilled marriages and others which are not so good." For this unchallengable statement WR are indebted to Miss Sheila Hancock. She made it early on in the first programme of her new series, But Seriously — It's Sheila Hancock, and it's a fair measure of the quality and depth of thought which ran through it, even though there were short passages when Germaine Greer, her interviewee, was characteristically very funny and penetrating and managed to ease the embarrassment of watching Miss Hancock trying and failing to live up to the ill-chosen title that had presumably been selected, for her.
Maybe it's the old identification trouble again. Miss Hancock is a delight as a comedienne and it is hard to think of her in the role of a serious enquirer. She wasn't helped, either, by having to switch roles constantly, from funny girl to serious Sheila to (God forgive whoever thought of that) torch-singer. Now that was really embarrassing. On top of that, the sketch material was thin with the exception of a Barbara Cartland send-up in which Miss Hancock's talents had reasonable rein. But even then (trying once more to be serious, I suppose) she came close to wrecking the effect she had made by coming out with a straightfaced, " Awful, isn't she? " at the end of it. In furtherance of the old grave-and-gay routine to which the programme was obviously committed, she also read a sentimental poem by Louis MacNeice on Florrie Ford, across a film montage, and while the studio audience (another mistake) dutifully responded, I couldn't for (sorry to have to use the word again) pure embarrassment.
Germaine was good value, though, showing us her navy knickers as she contorted herself in a really quite funny bit which had her trying to figure out the recommended positions in a paperback sex manual for ladies. She was more agile than Sheila, too, at easing back swiftly into a serious vein and handing out the old one-two to tight-wad husbands.
And of course we had to end with a swing at the Miss World contest in the shape of a mildly funny sketch which tailed off badly at the end, having featured cheesecake males parading for the Mister World title, wouldn't you have known it.
Which brings me quite logically to last week's premier sporting event, the Miss World contest itself (BBC1, as ever). Not much of a field year, I thought, and inevitably the programme brought back a painful memory from last year when, in front of witnesses and before there had been any elimination at all, I correctly forecast the first three in order and was too miserably thick-witted to have thought of ringing the bookie to get some fast money down.
Last week I didn't venture a bet either. I nominated Miss Israel and Miss Norway but not with any great conviction and quite failed to pick out Miss Australia from what was, as I say, a mediocre bunch of starters, I think that it's time the BBC realised its responsibilities to serious Miss World punters and gave, us starting prices and so on. Michael Aspel and Terry Wogan might give way gracefully to Clive Graham and Peter O'Sullevan and maybe they could shift the whole thing to Epsom Downs. A serious contest deserves a serious setting.
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