Television
Euro-ugh
Richard Ingrams
'The weak die early,' wrote R. L. Steven' son, 'and the survivors amid howling wind and pumping rain are sometinles, tempted to envy them their fateii Thoughts of a merciful release from it !I' were never far from my mind over tiled Bank Holiday weekend as the win howled and the rain pumped down. Clic' ket was cancelled, the budgie had gone' there was no hope whatever of getting t° work on the marrow patch, and Oa could only console oneself with the retlec' tion that it was at least unlikely that one would, in one's rural seclusion, be done over by bands of menacing Scotsnlen singing `Che sara, sari!'
Any hopes that the television CO panies would rise to the occasion in Onditions calculated to make the ShropShiref Lad go out to 'slit his throat were, course, destined to be dashed. OnlY a re-showing of the grand old Alastair Sir°, — Margaret Rutherford film The HaPPiesil Days of Your Life (ITV) provided a we come diversion. We were promised • Muppet special by ATV but even &it turned out to be a disappointment. t seems to be a rule that successful WWI' sion performers cannot resist the urge to try their hand at a fill-length film for Showing in cinemas. Even the Muppets have now succumbed and Saturday's hour-long programme, Muppets go to Hollywood, was little more than a glorified plug, prompting despondent thoughts that my heroes might have sold out. The show, which was filmed in some grand and vulgar Hollywood watering hole, proved that the Muppets can only function properly in their own toy theatre, and also that anything more than half an hour is too long. I doubt very much whether the full-length film will be any good; all the same I will probably go to see it just to make sure.
One of the main advantages of Britain's entry into Europe was that it brought to an end, so it seemed, those Programmes which went on throughout the Sixties about whether entry was a good thing or not. Older readers will remember those interminable Panorama Bore-Ins featuring heavyweights like Lord Gladwyn and Douglas Jay banging On about the Common Agriculture Policy, the great vista opening up, etc. Unfortunately the elections for the Eurorean parliament have brought the whole ot out of retirement and all this week the BBC is mounting a series of old-style debates. This will only undermine the European idea, whatever that is, as I suspect that the reason most people voted for the Common Market was that they assumed they wouldn't thereafter be bothered about it. More television programmes such as the one which I watched (In Sunday, called enticingly Britain in Europe — Outside the Golden Triangle (8BC2), will do nothing to provoke enthusiasm for the European parliament. l'he only thing to be said in favour of this assembly, it seems to me, is that it is a Useful device for getting rid of our surplus politicians like Lord St Oswald, Conservative candidate for West Yorkshire, bY packing them off to Brussels where they can make speeches to their hearts' content about the tachograph and the Great Age We Live In, while fellow delegates wearing earphones peer earnestly at them and ponder about the curious ways of the British. A helpful reader has at last solved for file the mystery of Mr Ingrams, the character who flickered briefly into a recent episode of Fawlty Towers. My correspondent points out that Mr Ingrams, accosted in the foyer of the hotel by John C. leese, was later surprised in his room Inflating a large rubber doll. This is of course a blatant example of defamation, calculated to bring me into ridicule and Contempt, and quite obviously inspired by Malice. However, unlike some BBC personnel I could mention who rush to their lawyers at the slightest opportunity, I will take no further action in this instance. It ()Illy confirms my view that old Cleese is a bit peculiar.
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