Television
Hour of the boiled sweets
Wendy Cope
The programme I intended to review this week was Freud: For or Against?, shown on Channel 4 at 11 p.m. last Wednesday. I was fairly sure I'd be home in time but, to make absolutely certain, I programmed the video to record for an hour beginning at 22:00. As I walked through the front door at ten minutes to midnight, I realised my mind had played one of those little tricks that Freud under- stood so well. My analyst says the prog- ramme was wonderful.
It is unlikely that I'll ever make the same mistake when I am aiming to record LA Law (ITV). As it happens, the shrink is rather keen on LA Law as well. He likes the blonde attorney called Grace — the one who went off with a gorilla at her wedding a few weeks ago. My favourite is Victor, in spite of his earring, but Victor doesn't seem to have any girlfriends and I think he is probably gay. I master my disappointment by telling myself that he is too young anyway, lives on the wrong side of the Atlantic, and, furthermore, doesn't exist. It goes to show, I hope, just how mature and realistic a person can be after a few years in analysis.
But it is time, alas, to put away frivolous things and pay attention to the boiled sweets. I refer, of course, to politicians. The article in which Auberon Waugh likened them to that item of confectionery has proved so memorable that the image comes back to me every time one of our elected representatives appears on the screen. Now is the hour of the boiled sweets and of all those current-affairs journalists who can't tolerate a five-year gap between elections. Fred Emery looked positively bridal as he introduced an edi- tion of This Week Next Week (BBC 1) entitled 'Naming the Day' and told us, with sparkling eyes, that the waiting was over.
I have been unable to share in the excitement up to now because I thought the result of the election was a foregone conclusion. On Friday's Nine O'Clock News (BBC 1) John Cole raised the possi- bility that the campaign might be 'like one of those boring boat races that's lost and won on the first bend'. One of the partici- pants in Weekend World (ITV), an adver- tising man who has worked for the Alliance, expressed the view that 'the election's over and the Tories won'. However, the main thrust of the weekend news and current-affairs programmes was to persuade us that this is not so.
Weekend World was all about voter volatility, with lots of statistics and charts on which little green perfume bottles sym- bolised the voters. A third of the green bottles, it seems, could change their minds between now and the election. Spokesper- sons for Labour and the Alliance, when discussing the local election results, have unfailingly referred to 'an excellent laun- ching pad' and — who knows? — one of those parties may turn out to have a spaceship too. Whether or not this is really at all likely, it is as well that we should believe in the possibility and take an interest in the campaign. A politician claiming that his party is in with a chance has no effect on me whatsoever but all the computer analyses, charts and pundits have been sufficiently confusing to dent my certainty about the outcome.
According to Weekend World, the key to success is projecting the image that the voters want. My impression of the three politicians who appeared on This Week Next Week is that none of them has quite hit on it yet. I don't think many voters can want to hear Roy Hattersley boasting about how he predicted a June election back in January when the Tories were dismissing the idea as ridiculous. Nor do I believe that Nicholas Ridley did his cause much good by accusing Professor Ivor Crewe of bias in favour of the Alliance. The Liberal David Alton was unobjection- able but I am afraid my mind wandered as he spoke. Poor Fred, for all his shining enthusiasm, presided over a very boring programme. In the expectation of many more like it, I shall set the timer on the video with special care.
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