Television
Lugubrious
Richard Ingrams
The speakers on Did You See...? this week were an Irish psychiatrist who is often on the box, Lady Vaizey the Sunday Times art critic, and a don from Leeds with a tastefully cut fringe. They all thought The History Man was absolutely marvellous and Lady Vaizey didn't at all object to the pornographic scenes because, she said, people often have conversations when they are 'caressing' one another, so what could. be more, natural than that such things should be portrayed on television? The psychiatrist and,the don smiled and nodded in agreement. The adapter of The History Man, Christopher Hampton, had appeared a fortnight earlier on Did You See...? He is a chubby, rather hirsute young man . who wears nothing under his V-neck sweater so that you can see the hairs on his chest. It struck me later that if any young satirist were looking for a theme he couldn't do better than portray a group of fat cats who win money and fame by poking fun at left-wing sociologists on the telly, whilst being careful to make their programmes as salacious as the regulations will allow, When I attacked The History Man on an earlier occasion I was rebuked in the correspondence columns of the Spectator by Mr Chaim Bermant who made the point that as the editor of a notorious gossip-andsmut magazine I was not one to talk. By a curious coincidence, at the same time as the last episode of The History Man was being shown on BBC2, Mr Bermant was appearing on Everyman on BI3C1 talking about his Jewish faith. The Jews, as it happens, have received much attention on the telly recently with many sympathetic plays and documentaries devoted to Jewish subjects, which is odd, especially now that the state of Israel has turned out to be a bit of a flop and bankrupt into the bargain. The trouble with Israel was that it turned many Jews like Mr Bermant, a well-meaning if somewhat lugubrious soul, into schizophrenics living in two countries at once. His wife in particular cannot be content with her life in Hampstead Garden Suburb but is desperate to be off to Israel where she says she will at last be able to feel free from antisemitism — a typically Jewish irony.
Spectator readers will have been familiar with the subject matter of A.J.P. Taylor's Edge of Britain (ITV) following the reprinting of the script last summer. Unfortunately the four programmes, which were shown in full to viewers in ,Granadaland, were edited down to a single hour-long version when it came to us poor deprived south erners. No doubt it was felt by the moguls of Thames etc that they had more important and fascinating material to hand e.g. Crossroads, Bruce Forsyth etc which ought to take precedence over a boring old historian waffling away about some run-down watering places up in Lancashire. Never mind. At least we had a good hour of the old boy as he plodded round his native heath dressed in a pudding basin hat and reminding me somewhat of the endearing Mr Magoo. As John Betjeman showed with his famous Metroland programme you do not have to travel to the rain forests of Brazil to find exotic things. They are there all the time under your nose if only you take the trouble to look. There couldn't be anything much more bizarre than the Tower Ballroom at Blackpool or Pugin's extraordinary fairy palace in Scarisbrick. And who would have guessed that there was a beautiful tondo by Eric Gill in the hideous Midland Hotel in Morecambe? Taylor wisely mixed a good deal of autobiography with his travelogue so that the programme was pleasantly personal in tone. His great appeal. as I've said before, is that, unlike all the slick telly men of today, he speaks off the cuff into the camera. He is also miraculously free from airs and graces, something which dates from childhood, when he told us he used to walk to school in the gutter so that he wouldn't have to mix with the other children on the pavement. He can also, we now learn, touch his nose with the tip of his tongue. It was just a pity that this delightful programme was marred by the music of Ron Geesin which sounded as if it emanated from a nightmarish electronic hurdy-gurdy.
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