Television
Hard work
Alexander Chancellor
Ilook in the Sunday Times to make sure I have got the name of the programme right. It says: 'Spitting Image. Last of the third-form humour series. The puppets should sue the script-writers.' Most news- papers are full of clever little comments like that about television programmes. Sometimes I think the television program- mes should sue the papers. In the case of Spitting Image there is a little bit of truth in what the Sunday Times said. The script is often not as good as it might be. But to dismiss it as a 'third-form humour series' is ridiculous. The puppets of Peter Fluck and Roger Law are in many cases quite bril- liant. Particularly good are those of the Queen, Prince Philip and Prince Charles – not mention Prince Andrew, who is perhaps the best of all. Neil Kinnock is also perfect, a cruel caricature which is at the same time exactly like him. Mrs Thatcher is less good only in the sense that the puppet bears only limited resemblance to the real person. But as an idea of what Mrs Thatcher ought to be like it is incompara- ble. The people the programme hates – notably Roy Hattersley, Norman Tebbit and Leon Brittan – are wonderfully foul, especially the slobbering Mr Hattersley. Mr Brittan is a gift. While the puppet looks utterly revolting, it is also remarkably true to life.
There is such pleasure to be obtained from merely contemplating the puppets that the feebleness of some of the sketches is easily forgiven. And not all of them are feeble. Sunday night's final programme, which preceded the announcement of the European election results, had Sir Robin Day in puppet form presiding over a Europe phone-in with Thatcher, Kinnock and Owen. Nobody telephoned at all, and the spectacle of Sir Robin trying to keep
the programme going in a vacuum was extremely funny. It was marred by the intervention of a real-life Denis Healey being interviewed by the puppet Day. Mr Healey is one of those politicians who like to show that they can see the funny side of things and don't mind appearing on a tasteless satirical programme like Spitting Image. Harold Wilson had the same weak- ness. It is supposed to make people love them more. For me it has the opposite effect.
The real live BJ3C2 coverage of the European election results had moments hardly less satirical. There was no phone- in, but the real Sir Robin Day did suddenly find himself without an Alliance spokes- man when there was a change of guard among his interviewees. Dr Owen dis- appeared but his substitute, David Steel, took a long time to turn up. Given the appalling results for the Alliance, he might have done better not to have turned up at all. But both Dr Owen and Mr Steel have become very good at explaining away defeats in a confident manner, and they both excelled. on Sunday night, There was also the young Foreign Editor of the new Sunday Times, Mr Milligan, showing an improbably eager interest in every little shift in voting patterns on the other side of the English Channel. Everybody seemed particularly over-excited by the modest increase in the Communist vote in Italy. This, they kept saying, was clearly the most important thing that had happened, where- as the setback to President Mitterrand in France was obviously far more significant.
None of this, however, was a patch on Dynasty, which preceded it on BBCI Dynasty, it can now be confidently stated, is more fun than Dallas. Its plots are more fantastic, and so are most of its characters. As a villain, although of the opposite sex, Joan Collins is the equal if not the superior of Last Sunday's episode ended with an attempt to drive a tycoon mad by mixing a sinister chemical into the paint which was used for redecorating his office. Dallas cannot match that.
Last September my predecessor Richard Ingrams reviewed himself being inter- viewed on television by Dr Anthony Clare. 'I found myself rather interested in the deeply hesitant, nervous, tongue-tied figure on the screen,' he said. I watched myself on television last week doing Gra- nada's What the Papers Say. It was a distressing experience. Any lingering illu- sions I might still have had about my personal appearance were brutally shat- tered, and although I had done my utmost to sound interested, by trying to read the script like a ham actor, I came across as bored and not a little frightened. You have to boom naturally like Sir Robin to go over well on television. The other dreadful thing about making television programmes is that it is terribly hard work. The result may be awful, but I will take comfort in Mr Gladstone's saying: 'Effort, honest manful humble effort, succeeds by its reflective action upon character better than success.'
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