If the line is busy, please do keep trying

Once upon a time, everybody knew this number:

Surely giving children the chance to pick up the phone and talk directly to their heroes was one of the most brilliantly imaginative yet beautifully simple ideas in the history of telly? And surely TV is so much poorer for not doing it anymore? Why the conceit has died is not especially difficult to guess; presumably Them Upstairs think kids nowadays prefer email, texting and other alternatives to speaking. Which is, naturally, bollocks.

Phones, or ‘phones to be precise, have come a hell of a long way since they could be the subject of an entire photo opportunity:

Yup, that’s the hotline to Moscow. Disappointingly, only the handset is red. Harold seems unimpressed by its presence, presumably because he’s more preoccupied with the doodle-potential of that conveniently-placed sheet of A3 paper. These two seem more interested in the possibilities of a telephone conversation…

…though admittedly this was back when watching monitors showing pictures of other people speaking into a telephone was self-evidently the pastime du jour of the chattering (do you see?) class. Telephones soon became a universal trope of TV, fording the otherwise stubbornly insurmountable chasm of current affairs…

…and light entertainment:

It’s not immediately clear what Larry is supposed to be doing here, but that’s kind of not the point. The photo itself is the important thing: Lal with a bank of standard issue handsets, perhaps passing on the latest gossip about Everard and Slack Alice (“She never puts it out, you see, except on Wednesdays, and then only after half-day closing”), perhaps counselling a distraught Pop-It-In Pete; it doesn’t really matter. The profusion of ‘phones, plus that towering montage of dials behind him, more than justifies this photo’s existence. By this point in history, the more telephones on TV, the better. Hence the Saturday morning ‘phone-in, culminating in the arrival of the – gasp – cordless handset on Going Live:

This was a time when the Beeb not only cared about the appearance of the presenters of their flagship shows, they also bothered to give them equally stylish technical gizmos. Hence Phil was able to do Live Line perched on one of the studio gantries, or out in the Concrete Doughnut if it was a nice day, or anywhere that afforded ample potential to busk when, as Had To Happen, he misdialled, or nobody answered, or there were problems on the line (“Come on, come on! Tch, this always happens! I think I dialled it right – let me just try again…[speaks while presses keys] dur dur dur, dur dur dur, dur dur dur…ho hum, bom bom bom, come on! I’m sorry about this viewers – is anyone from British Telecom watching? Only joking!”)

Then, as always happens with a good thing that doesn’t need changing, somebody changed it. Exciting, fresh and funny exchanges twixt caller and celeb were replaced by cold, clinical and soulless online chats and email exchanges. Presenters thought they knew better than the public at asking questions, culminating in the isn’t-this-enquiry-crap-and-aren’t-interviews-just-a-fucking-waste-of-time business perpetuated by the presenters of T4. This kind of stuff didn’t help either:

What’s wrong love, don’t you know what a dial is? Neither was this likely to rescue the telephone’s reputation:

Yes, it’s the Amstrad emailphoneatron, as available to view every Wednesday night on BBC1 on the desk of the person hired to play this week’s incarnation of Frances.

A TV show that had the top celebrities of the day on one end of a telephone and ordinary folk on the other would rescue the ‘phone from these and other malign influences (such as playing stooge to Noel Edmonds) and turn it once more into a thing of import and entertainment.

Unfortunately such an idea would probably be dismissed as “not contemporary enough” by Them Upstairs and passed over in favour of another talent show for freaks like they had in the 70s.

Is that still going?

News that the pilot of Last Of The Summer Wine almost failed to get made at all has been filed eagerly in TV Cream’s ‘If Only’ box file, next to Richard Stilgoe almost writing a script for Dr Who and Margaret Thatcher almost not winning some crucial byelection or other back in the 1950s.

The box file in question is conveniently (for this blog) adjacent to another one marked ‘Is That Still Going?’, wherein TVC maintains an inventory of those programmes that ran on far past their Best Before date, usually because no TV executives could be arsed to think up something with which to replace them. Currently, the top 10 looks like this:

"Yes, we do employ black nancies too"

Esther should have gone the same time as Mrs T.

That weird non-feminine femininity, the hotch-potch of now-here’s-the-good-news, now-here’s-some-more-bad-news, all those bloody hangers-on – it had lost all appeal come the end of the decade.

And the same goes for Esther (ho fucking ho).

Here’s La Passionara with a rather desperate bunch of ooh-it’s-the-90s nancies (note how Doc’s still managing to hang on in there, replete with Jumper Sent In By Thoughtful Viewer).

Twee vocalists and crap puppets not pictured

9) Rainbow

Proud sponsors of Britain’s student T-shirt industry.

Seemingly remembered for all the wrong reasons (i.e. for being good, funny, subversive, charming and so on) instead of being remembered for its insufferable boredom and dreary sermonising.

"Does Mr Robot Dog 'ave something for this young gentleman 'ere?"

8) Jimmy Will Fix It

“It ended because I told the BBC it should end,” remembers Jim, wrongly. In reality ratings had slumped – rightly so, given how fixes such as getting to help the chancellor of the exchequer write the Budget were, in the words of Carter USM, Lamontable.

A gay man pretends to be aroused by feeling a woman's breast

7) Are You Being Served?

The most uncommercial, threadbare-looking and least patronised department store in the whole world somehow manages to stay in business for 13 years (until 1985!) thanks to a turnover wholly comprised of references to tits, homosexuals and “sales drives”.

"Another series, Humphrey?" "Yes...Prime Minister"

6) Yes Prime Minister

It just looked wrong having Jim Hacker turn from fallible bumbler with a heart in the right place to pompous preener with no touch of humanity. Especially as Sir Humphrey and Bernard didn’t undergo any personality rewrite whatsoever.

Ted surveys the morning agenda

5) 3-2-1

The issue here was probably a studied reluctance to move with the times. In other words, Ted Rogers thought it was still 1963 when it was actually 1987.

Hence the old-time variety schtick. Hence the “surprise” guests from decades ago that most of the viewers couldn’t give a toss about. Hence the convoluted parlour game riddlery when most people didn’t have parlours. Hence Ted doing yet another bloody tribute to Danny Kaye. Hence a remote-controlled bin being thought funny.

The cast of Dixon of Dock Green, yesterday

4) Dixon of Dock Green

Any programme that boasts a chirpy whistle-along-with-me theme tune replete with affable talky bit from your titular ordinary copper (“Allo, that boy with the mouth-organ’s back again!”) deserves something of a lengthy run on the box, but perhaps not one that takes it well well past the point that “teddy boys” stopped wanting “their capers to be seen”.

Or, indeed, the point that teddy boys stopped.

Hands up who thinks Henry should come back?

3) Game For a Laugh

Now come on. Who ever thought a line-up of Beadlebum, Rustie Lee, Martin “P” Daniels and the other one was an idea worth half a second of anyone’s viewing consideration? Where’s the frumpy one in a big frock? Where’s the gnomic head boy? Where’s the multi-coloured jumper?

"It seems you were right all along, Lovejoy"

2) Lovejoy

The man’s divvying and all that endless East Anglia scenery might have been palatable for a couple of series, but when it dragged on into the 90s and those dreaded words “Executive Producer: Ian McShane” suddenly turned up on the credits, all charm disappeared as fast as a predictably rare vase at a predictably unassuming car boot sale.

"Ooh, I could rip a tissue" "Not if I don't rip seven shades of shit off you first" "Now calm down, Janet"

1) Crackerjack

The best thing Michael Grade ever did was pull the plug on this noisy, shouty, unfunny parade of gunge, lettuces and mincers.

Fuck knows why Janet Ellis is here; at least she escaped with eardrums and career intact.

South Bank Show goes south

Melvyn’s plaything has been axed.

Surely nobody will mourn its demise. It’s been a joke for years, shoved out at the arse end of Sunday nights, shorn of all dignity and respect, spending two thirds of each series profiling whichever D-lister was propping up ITV’s schedules that week.

Besides, it stopped taking itself seriously when it binned off the full, glorious version of the theme tune and started using that weird, abbrieviated one with no title sequence and just one boring graphic.

The last good one was the edition  in 1992 about how Sgt Pepper was made, with George Martin pissing around with a giant recording console at Abbey Road.

Here’s Melvyn and friend toasting his smugness, yesterday:

And now on BBC1, it’s time to pour another glass of…

The last ever series of Last Of The Summer Wine began the other week. Or did it? The Beeb simply says it’s the 30th, but producer Alan “one line on my CV” JW Bell seems to think that’s it. Or rather, that’s it for him, because he’s quit claiming the Beeb has said the 30th series is the last one even though it hasn’t while writer Roy “two lines on my CV” Clarke hasn’t said anything either way and the cast are all too old to be insured to appear in the bloody thing anyway. Or are they?

Hmm, the future of this vintage (ho fucking ho) institution is as hard to unravel as its history. But TV Cream has given the latter a go. It seems to have gone something like this:

1) A DIFFICULT BIRTH

An episode of Comedy Playhouse in 1973 called The Last Of The Summer Wine and starring three mac-wearing malingerers is deemed a hit by the BBC suits. A series is commissioned but it is a flop. A second series is commissioned but it is also a flop. Both series are shown post-watershed and star Michael Bates as shifty ne’er-do-well Cyril Blamire with whiskery perv Compo Simonite (Bill Owen) and simpering wimp Norman Clegg (Peter Sallis). Bates leaves because of ill-health and BRIAN WILDE agrees to replace him so long as he gets top billing.

2) A TROUBLED ADOLESCENCE

BRIAN WILDE is unhappy about not getting top billing. The show moves from Monday to Wednesday to Tuesday night. The 1978 Christmas special is aired at 10.40pm due to its explicit content. Someone decides to bung it in the doing-the-pots Sunday teatime slot. Ratio of pastoral pontificating to falling off dry stone walls: earthy. The perv pervs at old woman’s pants. The wimp simpers about not eating enough iron. BRIAN WILDE quits because nobody likes him and he doesn’t like anybody.

3) THE UTTERTHWAITE INTERREGNUM

Percy Alleline off Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy invents himself a part in the series. Second eleven of archetypes introduced: hen-pecked husband who isn’t getting any, hen-pecked husband who doesn’t want any, hen-pecked lollygagger who’s had too much. Millions of old women sit about discussing “thems that have, thems that have not” in high-backed chairs. A cafe has no customers. Perv tumbles off ladders, through roofs, down drains and through windows. Thora Hird sucks her teeth in and whistles. Lousy spin-off, First Of The Summer Wine, has Sallis playing his own father. Ratio of pastoral pontificating to falling off dry stone walls: salty.

4) THE WILDE RESTORATION

BRIAN WILDE discovers he likes everyone again and comes back. Eight years pass. BRIAN WILDE leaves because he’s not top billing and he doesn’t like anybody. Ratio of pastoral pontificating to falling off dry stone walls: perspicacious.

5) THE LET’S-PRETEND-NOTHING’S-CHANGED GAMBIT

Bill Owen lookalike and son of Bill Owen joins to play son of Bill Owen. Captain Peacock replaces BRIAN WILDE. Same scripts recycled (for 14th time) in hope of appearance-of-freshness-yet-still-reassuringly-familiar appeal. It works. Programme wins 1999 National Television Award for Best Sunday Teatime Yorkshire-Based Yomping.

6) THE LET’S-NOT-BOTHER-PRETENDING-EVERYTHING’S-CHANGED ENDGAME

Dozens of Variety Club sitcommers move into town. Original cast now not allowed on location and film all scenes on a sofa with back projection. Archetypes now include dopey black policeman, conniving Oriental, befuddled swashbuckler, prickly spinster, Rene Artois, Nurse G-G-Gladys Emmanuel, whatshername off Bread and Norman Wisdom. Oh, and Blakey, who does this every five seconds:

Altogether, for the billionth time: “The last of the summer wine/The la-ast of the summer wine/The la-ast of the summer wine/er…”

Girls, girls, girls

BBC4’s Saturday night parade of female-fronted song-and-dance archivery felt like it accomplished two things.

First, it highlighted how you don’t see any of the following on TV anymore:

a) Routines wholly centred on fancy dress
b) Casual racialism
c) Moments where the studio seems to be in complete darkness

But more significantly it called attention to the absence of any comparable non-male helmed programmes doing the rounds today. Barrowman, Brucie, Norton, Ross, Ant and Dec: where are their female equivalents?

Fortunately the TV Cream Gentle Sex Matrix Databank has rustled up three pitches which are going to be sent to the BBC Entertainment department first thing tomorrow morning.

1) A SLICE OF SARAH
Sunday 7.30pm, BBC1
The delightful Miss Cracknell eases you into Sunday evening with a rich mix of celebrity and song. Each week’s show has a theme, such as the weather, fashion or America, which Sarah and her guests explore through timeless tunes and witty turns. Regular contributors Instant Sunshine serve up a melodic ode on an aspect of the week’s news, and legendary singers from Val Doonican to Kate Bush drop in for a duet. Why not forget about those pre-Monday blues and enjoy familiar faces from past and present, a joke or two, and – naturally – class performances by Sarah with her band of 20 years, Saint Etienne.

2) LIFT OFF WITH ALESHA!
Wednesday 8.00pm, BBC1
The winner of Strictly Come Dancing 2007 makes her primetime TV debut with a star-encrusted variety spectacular for all the family. Alesha and her backing dancers, the Dixonettes, promise a cavalcade of good moves and great grooves. Every week there’ll be a dazzling routine with stars of Strictly Come Dancing (including Brucie, if he’s not too busy on the golf course!), a tune from a famous BBC face, and a celebrity revealing a hitherto secret talent. Alesha will also be showing viewers what she’s been up to during the week, springing surprises on people from 8 to 80. Each show includes a rundown of the midweek singles chart.

3) IT’S LAUREN
Saturday 5.35pm, BBC1
Teatime musical treats with an extra helping of cheeky charm. The former Kenickie singer-turned-national treasure shares some of her views on life through song, dance and plenty of down-to-earth humour. Professional comedians, magicians, crooners and dancers will be popping in to get the weekend off to a swing, along with regular guests Chris Serle, who’ll be introducing colourful locals with a story to tell, and Danny Baker, who’ll be broadcasting live out and about encountering Britain ‘as it happens’. Plus Lauren is challenged to learn and perform a classic song before the end of each show, in front of a panel of celebrity judges. Whatever they think of her efforts, they’re sure to agree on one thing: it’s Lauren!

12 candidates. One channel. Sir Michael’s quest…begins.

The Apprentice is losing its lustre. ITV continues to struggle to find new hit shows. An obvious synthesis suggests itself.

Next spring, every Wednesday at 9pm, ITV should screen a series involving a dozen wannabe broadcasting moguls, competing for a crucial position on the staff of the country’s erstwhile favourite commercial broadcaster.

It is a job with a six-figure salary, in the employ of a man who oversees a “substantial business empire”: Sir Michael Grade.

Each week the candidates must perform a task to demonstrate some aspect of telly nabobbery. And each week one will be fired. “You’re out”, Grade will say, and point his finger.

Grade will be helped in his quest by two close associates and industry veterans: Greg Dyke (catchphrase: “cut the crap and make it happen”) and Liz Forgan (“this isn’t Channel 4, you know”).

Tasks will involve:

- assembling a Saturday night schedule
- being grilled by the Culture, Media and Sport select committee at the House of Commons
- negotiating pretend salary deals with big talent
- solving a pretend industrial dispute
- devising a format for a new Sunday night family-friendly shiny floor show
- a war game-style event involving the channel responding to a national crisis

The final will require each of the remaining candidates to commission, prepare and produce a live half hour of television, which will be shown sequentially on ITV, which will be appraised by a focus group in real time (viewers will be able to see the group’s live reactions on ITV2), and which will be followed by the conclusion of the series and Grade’s decision. The winner will then be escorted over to ITN for an IMMEDIATE appearance on News at Ten.

Oh, and the name of the series: Making The Grade.

James Bond, incidentally

Inspired by a couple of tunes somebody has added to the TV Cream Spotify playlist, plus watching The Spy Who Loved Me on DVD and chuckling at some of the music cues, plus the fact it’s a holiday weekend when thoughts invariably turn to Universal Exports, here’s a new playlist comprising the best bits from the Bond soundtracks.

Not all of the original albums are on Spotify. There’s a complete run up to and including Moonraker, then a gap until – erk – Licence To Kill, while only Goldeneye from the Brosnan years is represented, and naturally everything since then, i.e. the James Bourne era, doesn’t count.

But from those selections that are, by expediency and taste, available to hear, a fine brew can be prepared. By way of some sleeve notes:

Things kick off with the brilliantly-named Twisting With James and the liltingly exotic Jamaica Jazz, both from Dr No, a film which doesn’t so much have a soundtrack as a vague collection of Caribbean sounding noodles, implausibly penned by Eric “Carry On” Rodgers.

John Barry makes his entrance courtesy of The Golden Horn, one of those I-wonder-what-foreign-music-sounds efforts with a parping horn and fluttering tambourine, and the short but sweet Guitar Lament, off From Russia With Love.

From Goldfinger comes the spectacular Into Miami, which should have been the film’s theme tune, and the intriguingly-titled and fabulously eerie Teasing The Korean. Barry hits his stride here: low strings, unnerving rumblings from the harp, and that trademark fluttery flute.

After just one from Thunderball – Cafe Martinique, which sounds (correctly) as swish as its name – comes a dose of Paddy Kingsland-esque Orientals from You Only Live Twice, the epic Capsule In Space and the shamelessly lush Mountains And Sunsets, then about the only decent thing in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service: an untrying piece of music called, unhappily, Try.

Diamonds Are Forever, being the best Bond film ever, naturally has the best John Barry soundtrack, which is why a grand total of four tracks make the playlist. The Whyte House is all sublime swagger; Tiffany Case has the most gorgeous vibraphone to ever star in a 007 flick; Diamonds Are Forever (Bond And Tiffany) has those fluttering flutes jousting with a sadly sauntering version of the theme; and Death At The Whyte House has fluttering flutes AND vibraphones AND swagger. “You appear to have caught me with more than my hands up.”

A quick passing of the baton and it’s over to George Martin for a salsa workout in Baron Samedi’s Dance Of Death, a groovy harpsichord boogie in the splendidly-named Bond Drops In, and some fat funk strutting in Trespasses Will Be Eaten, all from Live And Let Die and all great stuff.

Why Martin wasn’t kept on is a mystery; Barry came back for the next film, The Man With The Golden Gun, which was shit, especially the music, so nothing from that makes the list.

Instead things move on to The Spy Who Loved Me, and a one-off score from Marvin Hamlisch. Synthesiser alert! Brace yourself for the first bit of electronica to ever appear in a 007 film, and ace it is too. Bond 77 has the works: squeaky glissandos, farting bass lines, swooshy strings, plus a honking saxophone and wicky-wicky-wacky-wicky guitar riffs. Ride To Atlantis sounds like Bouquet Of Barbed Wire crossed with The Onedin Line, and End Titles is just that: the glorious bit from “Shall we get out of these wet things” onwards, although sadly lacking that brief burlesque Broadway rendition of the theme.

To end with, there’s Bond Arrives In Rio And Boat Chase: John Barry’s last hurrah, from Moonraker, replete with an aah-aah-aah-aah choir and a continent’s worth of percussion.

And that’s your lot. But maybe that’s no bad thing, as everything post-1979 (bar the soundtrack to Never Say Never Again) is, as Bond himself says, like listening to The Beatles without earmuffs.

Back pages

Maybe it’s stating the obvious on a blog like this, but there’s little that’s as evocative as the smell of a back issue.

The things we read when we were younger aren’t merely collections of words and pictures from bygone days; they are repositories of memories of how we used to live. One whiff of a yellowing comic, a dog-eared inky or a crumpled weekly and you’re transported back to another, usually better, age.

That most of those back issues now belong now defunct titles adds a layer of wistfulness to the proceedings. Not only do the publications hail from a portion of your life that no longer exists, but the publications themselves no longer exist, either then or now. Once-ubiquitous legends of the newsstands feel like remote relics, with no ties to today.

All these titles seemed better in the days when you first read them. This surely isn’t just the process of nostalgia. In many cases they were better in the days when you first read them, because that was when they were still fresh, exciting and fun.

The pinnacle in the lives of Smash Hits, The Face, Select and the newly-deceased Arena fell in the first half of their existence, which was, to essay a rash generalisation, when most of the people reading this blog probably also read those magazines.

On the other hand older titles, such as Look-in, Melody Maker and Sounds, were most likely already at their peak when you stumbled upon them. Look-in certainly was, and if inconsistency was a problem for MM and Sounds, they could always turn out a decent issue one week after turning out a crap one, thanks entirely to whoever was on the cover.

The extinction of so much childhood wallpaper keeps on getting faster as the rest of us keep on getting older. There’s possibly no more hurtful reminder of the passing of time, or the passing of fashions.

You could argue it’s difficult to mourn the non-existence of something that, say, turned so rubbish and fell so far. You could also argue that’s like saying Marlon Brando should only be remembered for Christopher Columbus: The Discovery, or Leonard Rossiter for Tripper’s Day.

Three bottles of whisky and ‘prices’

BBC Parliament has come up trumps again. On Saturday 28th March it’s devoting an entire evening to recounting the events of the same evening 30 years earlier, when the Labour government lost a confidence motion by one vote and were forced to hold a general election. Loads of shenanigans and skulduggery went on; as Tony Benn recalls in his diary:

“Roy Hattersley, it was said, tried to get a couple of Scottish Nationalists to support us by promising an inquiry into prices in Scotland and Wales, and had given Frank Maguire, the Independent Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, three bottles of whisky and offered an inquiry into food prices in Northern Ireland…”

Anyway, it was the night the government fell, and the evening of programmes is called, not uncoincidentally, The Night The Government Fell.

There’s a brand new documentary putting the whole thing in context, which is all to the good but the real gems follow on: an edition of Tonight from 28th March 1979, live from Westminster, with Robin Day and Donald MacCormick looking askance at the likes of Michael Foot, Francis Pym and John Pardoe; highlights from the actual motion of confidence debate, which given it was recorded in sound only implies there’ll be some newly-added, tantalisingly-basic illustrative montages/slideshows (caricatures, hopefully, or maybe cartoons from newspapers of the day); a message from Uncle Jim himself, transmitted the night the, erm, government fell; and “highlights of news coverage and other archive programmes from the time”.

This is the kind of thing BBC Parliament always does very well, and will surely be the perfect way to pass an otherwise imperfect Saturday evening. No mention of a linking host or presenter, though; surely Michael Cockerell is waiting for the call?

A Sunday night-shaped hole

The weekend has only a few hours left to live. Monday is trying to make itself heard. You’re trying not to listen. It’s snowing outside. The choices: a pile of ironing, making tomorrow’s lunch, or giving up and buggering off bed.

It wasn’t always like this. Once there was a “smell” to a Sunday night, one that reached its zenith in the 80s when Michael Grade believed he’d bottled said essence and knew the precise ingredients to give it maximum potency.

Sunday night telly used to be…Sunday Night Telly. It used to feel like it could lift this most unlifted and listless of occasions into something that was actually worth looking forward to, something that had a bit of a character and its own personality.

It might be the night for costumed roustabouts. It might be the night for biblical bombast. It might be sweary puppets or chinking ice cubes or upper class twittery or working class shystering or whiskery Whickery or feature length Potter or pensionable heifers or Richard Briers organising a Neighbourhood Watch scheme…but it was always Something. Now it is Nothing. There is fuck all that makes Sunday night a Night Of Television.

And this is a crying shame. Because Sunday night is still Sunday night. It is still always the end of something (the weekend) or the prelude to something (the working week) but never anything in its own right. It still needs something that resonates in your nostrils. And yet Sunday Night Telly is no more. Nobody bothers to treat it like an occasion, even though it is the one occasion above all else in the week that needs just that: to be treated, to be garlanded, to be scrubbed and dressed and made to shine.

Sure, you can watch something on video or DVD to try and mollify proceedings, but you can do that any old night of the week. There needs to be something that is bolted to Sunday nights to give it back its whiff of the giant Grade cigar. To send you off to bed and into Monday with something other than a feeling of shuffling towards the gallows.

There’s a Sunday night-shaped hole in TV Cream’s heart that needs to be filled.

‘Heavens woman, yesterday was 24 hours ago!’

An ex-KGB spy has bought the Evening Standard. If only this were 1969, not 2009…

[AFTERNOON. INTERIOR. A CAVERNOUS OFFICE LINED WITH GIANT PORTRAITS, MURALS AND LANDSCAPES; A CHANDELIER HANGS FROM THE CEILING. AT ONE END, A HUGE MAHOGANY DESK. TO ONE SIDE, A FIREPLACE BLAZES. BAY WINDOWS OVERLOOK LONDON'S SKYLINE. THERE IS FADED CARPET ON THE FLOOR. A GRANDFATHER CLOCK TICKS. A MAN SITS SILENTLY IN A SWIVEL CHAIR BEHIND THE DESK, HIS FACE OBSCURED.]

[THERE IS A KNOCK ON THE DOOR]

PATRICK WYMARK: Enter!

[THE DOOR SWINGS OPEN. AN ENORMOUS MAN IN A FUR COAT AND TALL HAT STEPS INSIDE, WAITS, THEN WALKS VERY SLOWLY INTO THE ROOM. HE STOPS IN THE CENTRE. HE CRACKS HIS KNUCKLES, THEN CLEARS HIS THROAT]

PATRICK: Can I…help you?

PETER USTINOV: That…depends.

[PAUSE]

PATRICK: Yes?

PETER: Excuse me, may I have the pleasure of knowing to whom I am speaking?

PATRICK: For now it is enough that you know I am who you believe I am.

PETER: Then let me extend the same courtesy to you.

PATRICK: [SWINGING ROUND IN HIS CHAIR TO FACE HIS VISITOR] That will…not be necessary.

[PETER SHUFFLES OVER TO THE WINDOW]

PETER: Oi-yoi-yoi. London in January is so beautifully decadent, my Western comrade. Why, I think I can ever see from here the, how do you say, the dolly bird?

PATRICK: Come come, I never put your sort down for coyness. Why start now?

PETER: Things…are different now…

PATRICK: Yes…Yes…

[HE PICKS UP A FRAMED PHOTOGRAPH AND, SIGHING, PLACES IT FACE DOWN ON HIS DESK. HE SHAKES HIS HEAD]

PATRICK: The days of the true imperialist are, I fear, long gone.

PETER: [LIGHTING A CIGAR] But I think you will agree that some imperial habits die hard, comrade? [CHUCKLES]

[PATRICK RISES FROM HIS CHAIR AND WALKS TO THE FIREPLACE, WHERE HE POKES AT THE EMBERS DISCONSOLATELY]

PATRICK: My dear fellow, there comes a point in any man’s life when even the most imperial of habits have to be broken…

PETER: …Yes, yes…

PATRICK: …If only to…

[HE PAUSES]

PETER: See what is left amongst the pieces? [HE SETTLES INTO A HUGE ARMCHAIR AND DRUMS HIS FINGERS ON THE ARMREST]

PATRICK: I believe you have a proposition, and I would be grateful if you would state it, then get out.

[A KNOCK ON THE DOOR. A WOMAN ENTERS]

BARBARA MURRAY: It is customary the world over to stand upon the entrance of a lady.

[PETER RISES, SHEEPISHLY]

PETER: Madam. One hundred apologies.

BARBARA: For your remiss etiquette or for your country’s outdated cultural barbarism?

PETER: What creature is this, that doth have such a barbed tongue?

PATRICK: The one who fixed up this whole damn deal. Now let’s get to business – the Secretary of State is keen to have this settled before the US market opens.

PETER: Ever the kindly thought for our American cousins.

BARBARA: A few more kindly thoughts from your country, sir, and they would be your cousins too.

PATRICK: Steady!

PETER: What…are your terms?

[PATRICK PACES AROUND THE ENTIRE ROOM, HANDS BEHIND HIS BACK, CHIN SUNK INTO HIS STOMACH, BEFORE SUDDENLY STOPPING AND POINTING AT PETER]

PATRICK: The whole operation. Every last printing press and stencil. Yours to do what you like with.

BARBARA: But…

PATRICK: No! Hear me out! My mind is made up.

BARBARA: Surely you…

PETER: Control yourself my dear. You heard the man!

BARBARA: I just don’t think…

PATRICK: No. No, no, no. I’ve decided. There’s just too much to lose, what with the Congo, American Tobacco, that ghastly foul-up in Laos…

BARBARA: But yesterday you…

PATRICK: Heavens woman, yesterday was 24 hours ago!

PETER: I congratulate you on your grasp of metaphysics, if not your sense of realpolitik.

BARBARA [FALLING TO HER KNEES, SOBBING] I beg of you…please…think of…

PATRICK: Think of what? Think of Oxford after the war? Think of the Isis in the moonlight, lying in each other’s arms while discussing the putative decline and fall of neo-fascist totalitarianism?

PETER: You have to admit, my lady, he does make a powerful case.

PATRICK: Please believe me. I have no choice. It’s just…it’s just…a matter of expediency…

[THE DOOR FLIES OPEN]

MICHAEL JAYSTON: Stop! Don’t sign! You mustn’t! I’ve…

[A SHOT RINGS OUT]

PETER: Expediency, you say?

[MICHAEL COLLAPSES ON THE FLOOR]

PETER: Hurry now. Name your price.

[PATRICK WALKS BEHIND HIS DESK, OPENS A DRAWER AND PULLS OUT A PIECE OF PAPER. HE SCRIBBLES SOMETHING ON IT, THEN WALKS OVER TO PETER AND HANDS HIM THE DOCUMENT]

PATRICK: My final offer. And believe me, I’ve sacrificed far more for far less.

PETER: I…I…

BARBARA: [HYSTERICAL] What’s the matter? Lost for words, you filthy man?

PETER: One English pound sterling?

PATRICK: Hand it over!

PETER: You will not regret this, comrade.

[HE HANDS OVER ONE POUND NOTE, THEN, CASTING ONE LAST GLANCE AT BARBARA, HURRIES OUT OF THE DOOR]

[INSTANTLY, ANOTHER MAN RACES IN]

PETER BARKWORTH: [PANTING] Was that who I think it was?

PATRICK: Alas, yes. That was the new owner of…the London Evening Standard.

CLIFFORD EVANS [STEPPING OUT FROM BEHIND A PILLAR, WHERE HAS BEEN SECRETLY WATCHING THE ENTIRE SCENE]: And may God have mercy on our capitalist souls.

[CUT TO BLACK]

…just coming!

Hooray for the fantastic year enjoyed by Adam and Joe – in particular, the growing ubiquity of STEPHEN! and the success of Song Wars.

The pair’s 6 Music slot remains the best show on the radio, enduring 12 months peppered by outbreaks of shingles, new babies, trans-Atlantic cross-talks and festival jaunts, plus eggcorns, juvenilia and numerous features involving Adam pretending to be a BBC commissioning editor.

STEPHEN!, meanwhile, continues to gather momentum, recently inspiring a limited exercise in audience participation at a Ben Folds gig, and also the video below. Here’s to an equally trubs-free 2009. Thanks a lot Al Gore!

“And what a great cover…”

We’ll be the judge of that, Gill. The Christmas Radio Times isn’t something that should need calling attention to, least of all by its editor on the very first page. It should speak for itself.

So let’s see what it has to say. On Christmas Day at 1.05pm on BBC1 there’s a seasonal edition of The Two Ronnies “from 1997″. Hmm, might have missed that at the time, don’t really remember it…maybe it was a special show of some kind. Oh, but it says “with guest David Essex”. Can’t remember much about ‘A Winter’s Tale 97′. Was Kate “I invented Candle In The Wind 97″ Thornton involved?

On New Year’s Eve there’s a one-off drama on ITV at 9pm starring Martin Clunes “as strait-laced museum curator Ian Jones”. A quick look at the cast list within the same billing reveals that Clunes is playing ‘Ian Bennet’. Then there’s the bit elsewhere when someone describes The Krypton Factor with the phrase, “if John Major had designed light entertainment, this is how it would have looked.” That’s the same Krypton Factor with an assault course that, in Gordon’s words, “demanded respect” and which had Steve Coogan and Tony Slattery doing spot-the-difference playlets. 

Anyway, clearly it’s worth rushing out that “LEGENDARY CHRISTMAS ISSUE!” a few days earlier than usual if it means not picking up on every single typo and error and lazy journalistic cliche. Here are a few examples of the Christmas Radio Times when it had a properly ’great cover’. Some TV Cream figgy pudding for whoever can identify the correct years:

1)

2)

3)

4)

5)

Different every time

In Sunday’s Observer Miranda Sawyer insisted the absence from the Radio 2 schedules of Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand, and their replacement with Richard Allinson and Alex Lester, was proof that the station “has returned to the golf club.”

“All Lesley Douglas’s hard work,” she moaned, “her sharp decisions over presenters and shows, her success at attracting listeners in their thirties and forties, everything: just piddled away.”

Right, so the disappearance of TWO shows, five hours out of a total weekly output of 168, constitutes the immediate evaporation of everything that embodied present-day Radio 2 and represents a wholesale return to some version of the station that existed decades ago and was clearly only listened to by landed gentry in starched spats and cummerbunds.

What a ludicrous argument. For one thing, Ross and Brand didn’t embody the current Radio 2. What did they have in common with Sarah Kennedy, or The Organist Entertains, or The David Jacobs Collection, other than the same frequency? The only thing they embodied was an attitude towards diverse programming. That hasn’t gone away. It’s still there in Wogan’s playlist, in Ken Bruce’s choice of guests, in every minute of Radcliffe and Maconie’s nightly two-hour shows, in the way Evans is followed by Desmond Carrington…and so on.

Secondly, what is this version of Radio 2 that Used To Be? When, precisely, did Sawyer’s ‘golf club’ exist? Throughout its life Radio 2 has always broadcast popular music dating from a greater historical period than any other national network. For much of its existence it was even more diverse than it is now, boasting sport, sitcoms, soaps and magazine journalism.

What was pioneered by Jim Moir, and pragmatically continued by Douglas, was a broadening of the playlist to champion (and break) new artists. With that came, inevitably, new presenters who could talk with authority about those new artists.

Does Sawyer think the station is now going to stop playing all music from after 1990 (a mirror image of the policy purportedly adopted by her beloved Radio 1 under Matthew Bannister, and equally false)? Or sack everyone under 40? Or bring back Richard Stilgoe and Instant Sunshine?*

Her witterings are unhelpful and will do more damage to an already nervous, jittery BBC. It sounds like she wants Radio 2 to fail, so she can be the first to say: told you so.

*Which would, to be honest, be a good deal more enjoyable than Richard “Na Night” Allinson and Alex Lester. Instant Sunshine could replace Allinson, with a kind of leisurely, weekend supplement-style look back at the last seven days in song; Stilgoe would replace Lester, with a Stop The Week-esque revue featuring guests and laughter. Plus you could keep the programme titles that seem to have been adopted by Radio Times (‘Saturday Morning Music Show’). And it would be brilliant.

What are you sayin’? What are you playin’?

With the future of genuine digital radio stations in doubt (as opposed to all those ‘pretend’ ones that you can get through your telly or online), it’s time for someone to step in and make sure there’s more than simply Planet Rock listed in Radio Times.

Inevitably that someone looks like being the BBC, but that’s all to the good, for there are plenty of opportunities for the corporation to launch cheap but effective channels quickly and professionally, thereby saving the medium from ever-dwindling pointlessness:

Radio 1 + 15
An exact, as it happens, unexpurgated repeat of what was being broadcast on Radio 1 15 years ago to the day.

Radio 1 + 15 + 1
An exact, as it happens, unexpurgated repeat of what was being broadcast on Radio 1 15 years ago to the day delayed by one hour and with new, live running commentary from relevant DJs, producers and guests.

Simon Says
Great music, great guests and lots of gossip from the country’s premier uni-monikered Etienne elite. Provisional schedule:
6am Simon Groom
9am Simon Mayo
12pm Simon Potter
2pm Simon Bates
6pm Simon Dee
10pm Simon Amstell
1am Simon Parkin

Order! Order!
A companion service to BBC Parliament, broadcasting live debates from the Palace of Westminster interspersed with memorable reports, interviews and rolling news coverage from the last 70 years. Launch highlights include A Day In The Life Of Scud FM; Michael Heseltine with a minute-by-minute account of the time he waved a giant mace on the floor of the Commons; a full replay of the 1981 Crosby by-election results programme; and Round Robin: a retrospective on Robin Day’s time hosting The World At One.

How We Used To Live
Old people remember the war in calm, reassuring voices.

I’m Backing Britain
A rousing, morale-boosting endeavour to see the country through the recession. Run by the Central Office of Information, this station will provide round-the-clock advice, tips, instructions and the very latest from the nerve centre of the government’s recently-formed National Economic Council. Presenters, including Michael Aspel, Cliff Michelmore, Angela Rippon and Suggs, will work six-hour shifts until the crisis is over.

On The Mike
24-hour coverage of Michael Palin as he lives his life.

S for Rantzen

Chris Hughes has unearthed striking proof of the existence of The Second Book of Jigsaw Puzzles (Jigsaw as in the Clive Doig-devised alphabetorium of antics) .

It’s a Cockney A-Z, complete with definitions, which apparently appeared in said book and which recently turned up online.

It’s hard to believe some of these are still in common usage. ‘S for Rantzen’? Most people under 20 won’t have a clue who that is. Ditto ‘I for The Engine’. Kids under 10 will never have heard of an envelope. And words such as mutton and zephyr have recently been given Grade II listed status.

Anyway, it’s good to know that somewhere out there must be a copy of The Second Book Of Jigsaw Puzzles, hopefully with a fully-illustrated story explaining how Jig was ‘born’.

But just what did this particular whim have to do with the desk of Doig?

A for ‘Orses ……………… (‘ay for ‘orses)
B for Mutton ……………… (Beef or Mutton)
C for Miles ………………. (See for Miles)
D for Ential ……………… (Differential)
E for Brick ………………. (‘eave a Brick)
F for Vescence ……………. (Effervescence)
G for Get It ……………… (Gee, forget it!)
H for Bless You …………… (Aitsshfa! A Sneeze)
I for The Engine ………….. (Ivor the Engine)
J for Oranges …………….. (Jaffa Oranges)
K for Restaurant ………….. (Cafe or Restaurant)
L for Leather …………….. (‘ell for Leather)
M for Sis’ ……………….. (Emphasis)
N for Lope ……………….. (Envelope)
O for The Wings Of A Dove ….. (O! for the Wings of a Dove!)
P for Relief ……………… (?!?!)
Q for A Bus ………………. (Queue for a Bus)
R for Mo’ ………………… (‘alf a Mo’)
S for Rantzen …………….. (Esther Rantzen)
T for Two ………………… (Tea for Two)
U for Me …………………. (You for Me)
V for La France …………… (Vive la France)
W for The Winnings ………… (Double you for the Winnings)
X for Breakfast …………… (Eggs for Breakfast)
Y for Husband …………….. (Wife or Husband)
Z for Wind ……………….. (Zephyr Wind)

Meet the man who’s bored everyone

Michael Parkinson has launched his own website.

For a man who hitherto never wasted any promotional opportunity to remind you he’s a journalist and NOT A TV PERSONALITY, the OMB (Ol’ Miserable Bastard) appears to be loosening the strings of his pomposity corset. For this site is nothing if not personality-led.

There’s a big photo of the man, seemingly biting on his own finger. We’re invited to “meet the man who’s met everyone” – not the sort of claim you’d expect from a lowly journalist of the old school.

We’re also asked to buy a CD entitled Michael Parkinson: My Life In Music. For anyone who *still* hasn’t heard of Jamie Cullum or Michael Buble, or rather who *still* hasn’t heard of how Parky discovered them all by himself (when his producer put their CDs in his journalistic hands), the first 100 preorders of this disc are signed by OMB himself.

At the bottom of the homepage there’s a plug for the pub owned by Michael and his son, the one that Terry Wogan is barred from for post-8am news comedic monologue purposes. Oh, and did you know that Parky has a book coming out, all about his life, called ‘Parky’? Being a journalist he has written it all by himself and will be “trailing around the length and breadth of the country” for some signing sessions. If you feel like that, mate, don’t bother, it’s really no trouble.

Anyway, the thing that really grates is the way he’s snaffled up all the rights to his TV interviews and will be filtering them online through his very own smarmy pipette whenever he chooses.

What a selfless act of journalism: placing himself higher than his public, and refusing to let the clips stand on their own merits. Instead we’re to be flattered with his own favourites and, presumably, all the ones that show him in a good light rather than his guests (or rather, show him in a better light).

Ah well, you’re thinking, perhaps OMB will give readers a right to reply to all of this bollocks on his new blog. Wrong. It’s called a blog, but it sure as hell isn’t one. It’s merely another megaphone for all things Parky, to which nobody is allowed to respond.

Among the titbits is news that he’s about to become Chancellor of Nottingham Trent University. Can you guess, reader, which name looms largest among those he has chosen to receive honorary degrees? Billy Fucking Connolly. How we’ll all look forward to hearing about Parky’s hilarious encounter with “one of my favourite people” in front of a bunch of graduates who don’t know who either of them are. Maybe the stage will be arranged in the style of his chat show, which as we now know went bankrupt because OMB wanted a pocket money rise from Michael Grade.

There is, however, a forum. Surely this is fizzing with activity, given Parky is “the man who’s met everyone”? At the time of writing it boasts just six replies. Maybe that’s because he’s personally deleting any response that doesn’t meet his exact journalistic standards of grammar and spelling. Or maybe nobody really gives a toss.

Thank fuck he’s not on TV anymore.

P.S. How come he hasn’t shelled out for michaelparkinson.com? It’s available. After all Mike, michaelparkinson.tv can’t help sounding a little, well, common…

No licence-dodgers, except one

Noel Edmonds was mouthing off in the press the other day, in an attempt to whip up interest in his wretched one-off Sky One show.

The self-styled Prime Minister-in-waiting (a bit like Hughie Green when he used Opportunity Knocks to try and take over the country in the late 1970s) moaned about, among other things, immigrants, people who knock astrologists, and the licence fee. “I’m so incensed by the idea that I’m guilty of something that I actually cancelled my licence fee a few months ago,” Noel thundered, bizarrely. “They haven’t found me, and nobody’s come knocking on the door.” Yes Noel, that’s because you live in a palace behind Berlin Wall-style ramparts that make it impossible for anyone to knock on your door.

Anyway, a few years ago when Noel was a nicer person and Deal Or No Deal had just started and people genuinely enjoyed his presence, he used to get in the papers every week for saying this kind of stuff. Albeit stuff of a far less offensive, more entertaining fashion.

Some of these escapades into print were used to fill up editions of the now defunct Digi-Cream Times mailout. Here were five of the best.

1) Noel gets into a fight with Mike Read
Edmonds crosses swords with his Saturday morning successor concerning the latter’s participation in Channel Five’s The Curse Of Noel Edmonds. Mike refuses to step outside, instead offering to write Noel an apologetic letter, though just as intriguing is the fact it all takes place at a party hosted by Anthea Turner.

2) Noel breaks the land speed record
Edmonds confesses he once drove a car at 186mph. It being Noel, there is some shameless innuendo worked into the tale, to the tune of an admission he once had sex in a Range Rover. “You can’t say you love cars if you haven’t ever made love in one,” Noel hisses.

3) Noel falls out with Ricky Gervais
Gervais is supposed to be collecting some kind of Lifetime Achievement Award from Noel at an awards ceremony. But he refuses to accept the award off Edmonds, citing unhappiness at this clash of cultures (i.e. popular v. unpopular – Noel being the former, naturally). It is unclear whether Noel subsequently asked Gervais to step outside for a fistfight.

4) Noel advocates infidelity
One of a number of celebrities canvassed for their view on what they see themselves doing “when I’m 64″, Noel testifies to wishing for a 64th birthday “spent in a hotel room bed, with someone else’s husband banging on the door”.

5) Noel gets a disease that gives him a Beadle hand
“It’s a bit ridiculous, but I am in agony.” The man does himself a mischief and makes it into the pages of the Daily Telegraph. “After 40 years in entertainment,” Noel whines, “I can at last boast that I have suffered an industrial injury.” The cause of this shocking turn of events? The Deal Or No Deal phone. “It’s pretty heavy and I have to pick it up a dozen times a show. We shoot three shows a day and it got so painful that I could hardly pick the bleeding thing up. I didn’t know what was wrong so I went to a consultant in Bristol last week and she diagnosed it as repetitive strain injury, rather like tennis elbow. She said she was a huge fan of the show and was sure that it must be from picking up the phone.”

"Please bring back club blue peeter it woz great"

This new book “by” Biddy Baxter comprising pieces of correspondence from the history of Blue Peter is a charming concept, but somewhat different in reality. Because it doesn’t just contain letters to and from BP during Biddy’s reign. It runs right up to the present day and the show’s current unhappy Key Stage 2 variety show format.

As much it’s nice to eavesdrop on a few exchanges about “club blue peeter” and sartorial gaffes, on reflection it feels too soon to be reading this kind of thing. It’s nothing to do with Biddy. It’s like rifling through someone’s saved mails from the other week. A bit of distance – a bit of history – lends the older material far more sustained appeal and, yes, a dash of poignancy.

The book tries to please too many people and, perhaps, ends up satisfying none. The past and the present should’ve been kept separate.

This might have set a precedent, though, for opening up the inboxes of current BBC programmes. Why stop at Blue Peter? A collection of eccentric emails sent to The One Show, for instance, could make for a perfect stocking filler.

Christian soldiers onwards

Excuse the Daily Express-style headline, but apparently Glynn Christian has just been given a lifetime achievement award for…well, being Glynn Christian.

The erstwhile Breakfast Time chef was honoured for his career at the Great Taste Awards 2008. The accompanying press release reveals he first opened a delicatessen in 1974 and “38 years later, that deli still exists [all the more remarkable for it being, at the time of writing, only 34 years later], in the same position, boasting the same name” – yes, a bit like all those branches of Tesco and Sainsbury’s that opened decades ago and which, for some reason, still boast those precise monikers today.

Anyhow, let’s not forget that “1974 was an age when fine food was prawn cocktail, overcooked sirloin, black forest gateaux and Mateus Rosé, all finished with a coffee with thick cream floating on top.”

Here’s Glynn, back on breakfast television earlier this year, squashed between Francis Wilson and Sue Cook.