Television
Heavyweights
Jeffrey Bernard Last week! was just too late to pass on David Coleman's best ever to those of you who may have missed it. Uttered at the beginning of the UEFA final between Bruges and Liverpool he said, 'For the benefit of those of you with black and white sets, Liverpool are playing in the all-red strip.' Nothing this week has stuck in the mind quite so firmly except for the grim and silent Winifred Wagner and the fiscal collapse of James Hadleigh. Since describing Hadleigh (Yorkshire Television) a few weeks ago as being one of the more revolting programmes on television I have to report that I've been watching it without fail and with considerable pleasure. I can't bear the character of Hadleigh himself but I can't help wondering about what it must be like being a squire. Does my colleague Auberon Waugh behave like this in Somerset, I ask myself? Will some producer have the sense to give Myra Francis —positively the Cleopatra of the West or East or whatever Riding it is that they've been messing about in—a decent part in a good play? Is Hadleigh's butler, Sutton, a queer fly in the ointment? Is Hadleigh himself just an upper-class layabout? All of this trivia blots out the Friday night angst that's caused by the knowledge that tomorrow's Grandstand and World of Sport might cost as much as £50 to watch unless the Newmarket and Lambourn gallops get some rain very soon.
Still running true to form, though, in spite of the mini-drought is the vast army of British pet lovers. Mad Dogs and Smugglers (BBC 1) showed some of them to be as thick as their dogs. One couple who'd been on a trip that Marco Polo and Drake might have been envious of to get a wretched dog from Rotterdam to their home in the North Country and which involved buying a boat and then a car, seemed totally unconcerned about rabies. The man had been given a sixmonth suspended sentence and fined £200: it would be nice to see these people being put down by vets. Talking to Christopher Brasher he said, 'A lot of people don't realise that a dog is human just like us.' He then went on to say that smuggling a dog into the country wasn't really that bad. 'It's not like robbing a bank,' he added. Who gives a sod about banks? It's to be hoped that he tuned in to watch himself and caught a glimpse of the rabid child dying in hospital, but that probably won't have worried some people. The child was black. Brasher was fine and he packs more sincerity into ten seconds of chat than almost anyone else except for the sports boys.
The World Championship (ITV) was well worth watching even though the result was well-known, never mind a foregone con
clusion. I gave Ali hardly any points at all for his clowning this time and his gestures of winding up--his arms going round and round—as the referee stepped in to save Dunn more of a hiding really were, as Reg Gutteridge said, in the worst possible taste. Losers' dressing rooms have always fascinated me more than the winners' enclosures and the look the camera gave us of Dunn in defeat was a touching cameo. He seemed to me like an enormous baby that had just been hit over the head by his own rattle. Dejection in a sequined dressing gown, tears on lame, embarrassed pats on the back—it was a lot more interesting than the manic ravings that must have been going on in Ali's room. As time goes by it becomes more and more apparent that Ali isn't and never was as daft as most people think him. I do think he might be going bonkers, though. There isn't anywhere else he can go. Dunn's apology at the death was lovely : 'Sorry about that.' It's quite alright actually. Better than alright was Alan Minter's comprehensive boxing lesson given to a Frank Reiche of Munich, insurance salesman and German middleweight champion. In the Munich Olympics Minter was robbed of a gold medal but he got his own back with a vengeance in this supporting bout to the Ali v Dunn squabble. Henry Cooper once said of foreign referees that you needed to knock your opponents out in Europe to get a draw. Minter was marvellous. Thank God World War II wasn't refereed by a German.
Husband of the Year (Yorkshire Television) is ghastly. The two victims last week were a rather severe tobacco salesman who said he could cope well in emergencies and a lovable and moderately dense bricklayer who brought his wife tea in bed and made her laugh from time to time. I thought the bricklayer should have won the heat—heat seems a particularly unsuitable word for a stage in a marriage contest—but the salesman won and probably has more ducks on his wall than the bricklayer has cracker mottoes up his sleeve. If you haven't seen this incredible programme it starts with a written testimonial read out by Pete Murray and written by the willing victim's wife and then the panel —of experts ?—question the husband to find out just how much of a treasure he is. Marjorie Proops is one of the members of this board of inquiry and she is sort of severe, understanding, lovable, wise and nobody knows the trouble she's seen. If Mother Superiors ever go AWOL I should think they behave like Proops. It makes you want to join the panel and ask some questions of both husbands and wives that are a lot nearer the knuckle. What I find totally extraordinary is anyone actually going on the box and owning up to all that's involved in being a good husband. Reading between the lines the eventual winner of the final must surely be a sexually undemanding tea boy with a high earning capacity and with a penchant for telling jokes on Jaywick Sands during the last two weeks in August. A BBC 2 version of this game for the upper-middle classes would be truly wonderful.
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