Television
Recreations
Richard Ingrams
Mr Alan Watkins, reviewing Who's Who in a recent Spectator, took me mildly to task for listing 'editing Private Eye' as my recreation, when, as he correctly stated, I was given to gardening and playing the piano, inter alia, during my leisure hours. These activities, opined the bonhomous doyen of political commentators, would better fill the 'recreations' bill. Since then I have been wondering whether Watkins has ever tried his hand at gardening. If so I do not think he would describe it as a recreation. It is more of an unending and soul-destroying battle against implacable enemies. Anyone who has struggled as I have to make the way clear for a few marrow plants to bloom would think thrice before describing his back-breaking efforts as a 'recreation'.
Music is perhaps a better candidate though even here 'recreation' is not the word that springs to my mind as I try for the N-thousandth time to give a perfect rendition of one of Bach's simpler preludes. My opinion is that both these activities which involve intense dedication and resolve are much more like hard work than journalism which is, as Watkins well knows, a bit of a laugh.
Most people, I suppose, if they were honest, would list watching the telly as their recreation. But in my present capacity I would unhesitatingly regard it, again, as 3 hard and monotonous slog. There is eel' tainly no pleasure involved. Perhaps nlY feelings are a little influenced by the fact that any time I have switched on in recent days I have been confronted by someone banging away about the European parliament. I have tried like anything to work uP steam about the Common Market but with out any success. My only definite conclusina is that most people who work for the EEC get quite fat. We know all about Christopher Soames and Roy Jenkins. I ha"! noted more fatties in recent days; a Frenea commissioner called Viscount Davignon, Tory candidate by the name of StanleY Johnson —both of these were on Panoratna, or may be World in Action — and a Labour man called John Prescote, I think, who used to be a Trade Unionist and is now sortie' thing in Brussels. Then there is of course the Grocer himself, glimpsed squatting in a bni‘i at Lord Grade's Vulgar Euro-Gala. All °I them, including Lord Grade, for that at ter, who was presented with a silver troPbY by some French box-wallah or other, loot as if they could do with a healthy dose 01 marrow-patch digging. Something seems to have gone wrong with my capacity for missing the right things at the right time. I missed the new RumPole — a very welcome returnee, to use Frostie's wonderful expression — though I hope t° catch up with the old darling in weeks t° come. I also missed the first instalment °I Crime and Punishment (BBC 2) and havill seen the second rather regretted it. production is a very definite cut above las' year's Anna Karenina. The Street scenes cl° give some feeling of Russia and the adaPtast have also kept in a lot of the apparc°,, irrelevancies which in fact make the storY convincing and lifelike — the hystes German landlady, for instance, who bursto into the death-bed scene of Marmeladov'.0 detail which has nothing to do with the Mt plot but which is a kind of hallmark of twe genius of Dostoeievsky who knew, Ity'd Shakespeare, that when important alls tragic things take place there are alWaYi ludicrous interruptions and arrivals. a remember when writing about Alri,5 Karenina that Tolstoy describing Lev,1°0 marriage ceremony notes that the Pe.,15 doesn't hold his candle straight and sPlbly wax on his hand and that the BBC ke omitting such details lost the flavour original. of Jonathan Powell, producer .ot Crime and Punishment, has got the rtd and he is much better served by his etai John Hurt is thoroughly convincing as t" d very 20th-century figure Raskolnikov arta Timothy West looking rather Oriental jell,. silk dressing gown, is an excellent Porflu
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