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Waspe
The salvation of the Olympics by the exclusion of Rhodesia may also have been the salvation of BBC-tv's Munich operation — a numbing 170 hours of coverage. Early this week it looked as though the only thing that would keep viewers switched on would be the possibility of David Coleman having a stroke if Britain won a track event. Even now, audiences may get pretty testy at having the Games on BBC1 up to 7.30 and after 9.30 every day. ITV, whose 22 hours of coverage looked meagre (though it will still take a 28-strong team to Munich), may yet have the last laugh.
Artless
The art critics have been at their most mealy-mouthed about the tendentiously titled exhibition, The New Art, at the Hayward Gallery. True, they have quoted slabs of Pseuds' Corner prose from the catalogue, but why the subsequent equivocation? I don't wish to pick invidiously upon the Observer's Nigel Gosling, but his conclusion does rather sum up the attitude of too many of his colleagues: "It may not be ' art ' but . . . it is an activity which no art-lover can ignore." That, I strongly suspect, is what every art-lover can very easily do.
Bart again
The first step on Lionel Bart's comeback trail with Joan Littlewood — his songs for the musical, The Londoners — evidently fell short of the desired result. After the Theatre Workshop production in March, items were immediately planted in the gossip columns proclaiming keen competition among impresarios to bring it to the West End. No one, in fact, was trampled to death in the rush, and the West End is still awaiting The Londoners — if not with bated breath.
Now I hear Bart is trying again, this time not only with Littlewood but with Frank Norman, with whom he worked long ago on Fings Ain't Wot They Used T'Be. Their new show, Costa Packet, is due at Stratford-atte-Bow in October.
Vice and virtue
The Mafia film, The Godfather, opening here this week in four cinemas in London alone, is confidently expected to add further record-breaking profits to its American millions. Meanwhile I hear authoritatively that the customers are not exactly flocking to see Young Winston, a lavishly made film on an evocative subject. Simon Ward is interestingly cast as the young Churchill, but it may be that others are taking the same view of his rendering as did a friend of mine who was irresistibly reminded of Gilbert's remark on Tree's Hamlet: that it was "funny without being
vulgar."
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