Television
Great stuff
Richard Ingrams
I hope that in the same way that we oldies can recall what we were doing when we heard the news of President Kennedy's death in 1963 all of us who are cricket lovers will remember to our dying day the circumstances in which we saw England win the third test against Australia in 1981. I myself had gone to the Granada studios in Manchester on Tuesday to record another couple of witty quiz shows in the series called Cabbages and Kings. Over lunch beforehand I had been chatting to our Irish guest, the Dublin litterateur, Mr Ulick O'Connor, dimly aware that at the far end of the room there was some slight excitement being generated by the TV set and that Bill Tidy and Alan Coren, the other two panellists, were talking rather animatedly and cheering from time to time, but I put this down to their normal high spirits and the effects of the Vino Tinto kindly provided by the Granada management. From sidelong glances it was possible to deduce that a number of wickets had fallen. I assumed however that they must be 'highlights' of the morning's play. I can't remember at precisely what point it was that I realised that the play was actually happen ing before our eyes, but from then on I was gripped. Poor Mr O'Connor, who had just flown over from Dublin no doubt expecting to encounter the usual gathering of dull, phlegmatic Englishmen getting mildly drunk as they discussed the worsening unemployment figures, what can he have felt to find himself caught up in an atmosphere of schoolboy chauvenist hysteria? So long as Marsh was there it seemed impossible that England could win but then Marsh mistimed his hook and was caught on the boundary. Lillee came in and began to hit the ball about, then we all had to go to Make-up. For a moment there was panic when Coren lost his way in the Granada corridors. At last we found the make-up room and there, thank heaven, was the Test Match going on in a corner, while the pretty make-up girls gossiped desultorily among themselves oblivious of the great things that were in progress on the box. Lillee was caught at mid-on and when Bright was finally bowled by Willis just before we were due to go into the studio, a deafening cheer went up and grown men embraced one another. There has been nothing so exciting on the telly since the Princes Gate siege. It remains to be seen whether the euphoria will be evident in that particular edition of Cabbages and Kings and whether Mr O'Connor will look like a poor bemused bogtrotter surrounded by bright-eyed Englishmen, their national morale at last restored.
I have been trying to catch up with Mr John 'Organ' Morgan, the new compere of The Editors. Normally my staple viewing during the doldrum summer period, The Editors has so far eluded me except for little snatches. I was all set to give it my attention this Sunday and to try to assess Organ Morgan in relation to his two predecessors George Scott and the disastrous Simon Jenkins. However some good fairy at LWT had obviously decided to make up to me for all those barren Sunday evenings of Melvyn Bragg followed by Gays, by putting on the Monsieur Hulot film Traffic. So although I caught a few glimpses of The Editors during the commercial breaks I did not really see enough on which to base a wide ranging critical assessment.There was a somewhat dreary debate going on about the Social Democrat Party with a man from the New Statesman with glasses making most of the running, trying to advance the ridiculous idea that the SDP was all got up by the media. It was a great relief to return to Jacques Tati trying to get to the motor show in Amsterdam with an absurd new camping car with built-in shower and TV. This film was described in one paper at the weekend as 'disappointing' a ridiculous epithet to apply to a work of genius. One point about Tati is that unlike most modern entertainment his films have an improvised air and you never quite know what may happen next. They also show the modern world as it is, a place of noise and absurdity with one or two little oases of tradition and good humour surviving in the desert.
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