Television
In the real world
Wendy Cope
Ididn't know it until Sunday but I may soon be an Aunt Agatha. This, as many readers will already be aware, is the patronising appellation bestowed on pri- vate investors by people in the City. If I take the plunge, I shall be a very small Aunt with 100 shares in British Gas. All the same, I decided at the weekend that it was time to stop treating all business and finance programmes as no-go areas and to find out something about the Big Bang.
An edition of Moneyspinner entitled `The Big Bang Special' (Channel 4) offered to explain what the changes will mean to the ordinary person in the high street. It was pitched at just the right level for the completely ignorant and I learned a great deal. One of the worst bits of news was that people may soon be able to buy shares at their local post offices. At my local post office the average time needed to buy a stamp is now about 15 minutes and I do not much look forward to the day when the queues are swelled by small investors with their chequebooks.
On the whole the programme managed to be entertaining as well as informative, although the attempt to liven up a list of watchdog organisations by putting their initials on a Scrabble board was doomed to failure. SIB. SRO. LAUTRO. IMRO. There is not a lot that even the most imaginative producer can do with material like that. Despite the mention of watch- dogs, there weren't any very reassuring answers to the most important question to emerge from the programme: 'How will I know I'm going to get a fair deal?'
Over on The Money Programme (BBC2), reporter Mike Rogerson express- ed the view that 'Anybody who wants to use the City's services is going to have to be very much more on their toes.' We were shown a film of a roomful of elderly people' in Eastbourne (described as 'Aunt Agathas and Uncle Algemons') listening to a stock- broker's representative talking about the new system. They looked understandably worried. In an interview, Michael Sargent of Warburg Securities said that private clients are going to end up paying more for services. I began to think I might stick with the building society after all. And later on Sunday evening I suspected there might be some truth in the words of the puppet Nigel Lawson on Spitting Image. 'Big Bang', he drawled, 'is simply screwing people on a massive scale.'
When I learned at lunchtime on Monday that the Stock Exchange computer had broken down and the whole thing had been a shambles, I felt reassured. As long as the installation of a new computer can be relied on to cause chaos, things haven't changed that much and I am still living in a world I can understand. The problems gave journalists the excuse they needed to refer to the obvious line by T. S. Eliot. If only I had thought of it in time, I would have counted the whimpers in Monday's news bulletins. There was 'a bit of a whimper' on News at Ten and one (step- ping outside my territory for a moment) on the front page of Tuesday's Independent. The Guardian, to its credit, seems to have provided a whimper-free account of the day's events. Between the idea and the reality, someone might have commented, falls the shadow.
In the same poem, 'The Hollow Men', Eliot writes about 'death's dream kingdom' and 'death's other kingdom'. Bobby Ewing is now beyond all shadow of doubt back from whichever of these he has been inhabiting for the last few months.
Tam. What's the matter?' he asked amiably. 'You look like you saw a ghost.'
Clearly the powers that hold sway over life and death in Dallas had decided to go all out for the comic effect and it worked superbly. Much funnier than Soap. Unfor- tunately, once it was established that Bob- by was alive and the last series hadn't happened, it ceased to be funny and became rather depressing. Most of the other characters still have the same old problems they had 31 episodes ago and I am not sure that I can face watching them sort themselves out all over again. Maybe it will all be different this time. Whatever happens I don't think it will be as enjoy- able as Pam's dream.
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