Television
Ubiquitous
Richard Ingrams
Writing perforce before the telly's full Jubilee yawnorama is launched on the public I can predict with some confidence that everyone will be heartily glad when it is all over. The royalty will not bear too much scrutiny, as has been proved by Sir Huw Wheldon's massive series on Royal Treasure. Last week he had got up to Queen Victoria, and was to be seen traipsing round Osborne like some high-class estate agent showing off the many very wonderful features.
Sir Huw belongs to the 'Er' school of commentators, that is those who believe that the word 'er' should be inserted at regular intervals in their commentary 'This er is the actual chair er in which er Queen Victoria er' (Tonight's John Tim pson is also a member of the school). The programme, which displayed many close-ups of chandeliers of various sorts and sizes, at least proved that if we have lost all the high-price junk in Mentmore, there is plenty more where that came from in Buckingham Palace.
It would have needed someone like Sir John Betjeman to bring Osborne back to life. But the BBC looks after its own. Wheldon the former Managing Director (TV), having reached retiring age last year and earned his knighthood has got nothing much to do, so well-wishers at the Corporation have brought him back in his role of guide. All he needs is a peaked cap and then we can send in trips.
The night before there had been a Jubilee Concert from the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andre Previn. When an orchestra is seen playing on the BBC, why is it that nine times out of ten it is the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andre Previn? Previn, who also has a 'chat-show' late on Sunday night, is another of those tele-monopolists I have complained about before. Why he should be given this tremendous exposure I find difficult to understand. As a conductor he is obviously a bantam-weight, a little mousy figure with more the mien of a band leader than a maestro. The members of the LSO are all a bit tatty too, looking rather like a lot of down-at-heel bank managers. This concert of British music perfectly matched my own mood of indifference to the Royal celebration. Even the Cockaigne overture was stodgy and lacking all excitement. The LSO just seemed to be going through the motions. Grocer Heath might well have done better.
The reason for Previn's ubiquity, I suspect, is that because he is a jazz pianist and married to Mia Farrow, he is thought to be a more popular figure with the viewers than
any of his contemporaries. I should think, too, that the culture-wallahs at the BBC go further and admire him more just because he can turn his band to Beethoven or boogy-woogy — a conductor for the seventies, Britain's answer to Leonard Bernstein. It is high time that other conductors and other orchestras were given their turn on the box and the second-rate Andre was allowed to go away for the long rest he looks as if he needs. My feelings of resentment against the cultural monopolists were enhanced when the following programme, Tonight, came up with a report on the Malvern Festival, presented by — 'Oh, no, not him again'. — Melvyn Bragg. What next? The Melvyn festival, with Yehudi Meluvyn, Melvyn and Supermelvyn etc.
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