The Light’s on at Signpost Read online

  In the long run, one has to hope for a sense of decency and responsibility in journalists, but when it is lacking—as it sometimes is—there’s nothing to be done but put up with it. God knows there is plenty wrong with our press, and always has been (even in the halcyon days of which I prattle so proudly); its standards have slipped, and it can be intrusive and beastly, but we must console ourselves with the words of A. P. Herbert: “Just be thankful that it’s there.”

  P.S. I can’t end without pointing out a distinction which politicians love to ignore and confuse, and about which the average reader may not have thought much. “Of public interest” and “in the public interest” are two entirely different things, as is plain if one looks at them closely. The first refers to something in which the public are interested, and will be happy to know; the second refers to something which, in the opinion of authority, it may or may not be good for the public to know. So when you hear either phrase used, correctly or not, pay very careful attention, because the bastards are probably up to something.

  The sight of a pig urinating may seem an odd accompaniment to an observation on Montaigne, but that’s British television for you. Gone are the days when it could claim to be the best in the world; now, in addition to the decline in programme quality, it seems to be suffering from a curious desire among producers to shock and disgust the viewers. The Montaigne-pig juxtaposition was unpleasant, unnecessary, and the product of a mind insensitive to the point of coarseness, a gratuitous vulgarity certain to offend normal sensibility while appealing to the laddish element whom the producers presumably regard as the norm. This leaning towards the ugly and distasteful is likewise seen in the close-ups of abdominal operations and carnivores tearing their prey to bloody shreds; the camera dwells on them even more lovingly than it does on stag beetles disembowelling each other, frogs and stick-insects copulating (along with the rest of the animal kingdom), and piles of festering rubbish featured in a programme about people whose occupation is cleaning up filth. (Muggeridge was right; you couldn’t make it up.)

  But while one would rather not have such things sprung on one out of the screen, and wonders occasionally what kind of mind plainly revels in showing them, they are infinitely preferable to the late-night obscenities, the foul-mouthed “comedians”, the leering, filthy-minded chat show hosts of dubious sexual orientation mugging for their audiences of braying morons who think four-letter words the height of wit, the interminable explicit sex scenes, the sniggering innuendos of scruffy yobs on panel games, and the truly pathetic full-frontal displays by young idiots who think themselves ever so liberated and daring and haven’t the brain or imagination to wonder how they’ll feel when their grandchildren download the old fools’ shameful antics from the internet fifty years hence. Or perhaps they don’t give a dam.

  Now, I know that I and my generation look prissy, prudish, and fuddy-duddy to a degree in Cool Britannia, being in thrall to those derided “Victorian values” which are such a hoot in the “in-yer-face” age. Of course we’re old, but even in our youth we wouldn’t have shared the modern delight in obscenity and ugliness and vicariously enjoyed suffering. We were squeamish that way, although no strangers to stark horror, death and disfigurement and pain and cruelty, and we committed and condoned deeds which are regarded as atrocious crimes today—but paradoxically, while our language was frequently foul and our sense of humour scabrous, and our behaviour uncouth, we did not care to have our maiden aunts offended, we cleaned up our language in public, we treated women as ladies and they responded in kind, we had a strong sense of privacy and decent reticence, we knew what was “done” and what was “not done”. (Gad, how pompously antique can you get?)

  Which probably looks like arrant hypocrisy to the youth of today. I don’t think so, but even if we were, a bit of judicious hypocrisy never hurt anyone in civilised society.

  We had just as many faults as the young today, but they were different faults; we were of our age just as moderns are of theirs (God help them). And being of our time, we wonder why so much television is frankly godawful, and even horrible and disgusting—to us, that is. Can it be that the teenagers and twenty-somethings of today are simply unaware of how revolting some of their entertainments look to their elders—and would look to every previous age since time began? Possibly; it’s what they have been conditioned to accept and enjoy; they know no better.

  But the children of the swinging sixties do, for they grew up in the twilight of a time when the old-fashioned values and ideals still lingered on in their parents, and one cannot help suspecting that resentment of that time and those people and values, a desire to raise two fingers to the past, and a rather unworthy intent to put the boot into the crumblies’ sensibilities, is at work in the broadcast media, particular in TV.

  It is as though they had taken as their watchword the execrable dictum of an odious BBC director-general of their time, who said that there were some people whom one would be glad to offend. What an odd ambition, and what a curious state of mind. Some people one might reasonably be glad to kill or banish, perhaps…but to offend? How ill-mannered. But his outlook is plainly reflected by those in television who lose no opportunity of rubbing the viewer’s nose in filth, sparing no pains, apparently, to find new ways to upset and distress those who do not share their taste for the obnoxious.

  There was a Scottish comedian whose declared ambition it was to see how far he could go with his adult material. I’ve worked with him, and he is genial and charming; he is also one of the funniest men I’ve ever seen, a natural comedian who epitomises that delight in the ridiculous, that sense that life is essentially one tremendous joke, so characteristic of the Glaswegian. That is what can infuriate me: the man doesn’t need to be filthy. But he is internationally famous, and filth is the flavour of the time. A pity, when he has shown that he can be so much funnier without it.

  I suppose it’s all part of the permissive society, and can be traced back to the Lady Chatterley case, which had the literary trendies dancing in the streets, and to the late Kenneth Tynan who, in uttering his notorious four-letter first, coined his own appropriate epitaph. The tragedy is that when the floodgates are opened only slightly, and possibly with the best of intentions, it’s only a matter of time before they’re torn off their hinges by the torrent. And eventually we have the diverting spectacle of those ultra-liberals who rejoiced at the Chatterley decision, pursing their lips and wondering if things haven’t gone a bit too far…

  It is not only the eagerness to offend, so reminiscent of the third-former gleefully scrawling indecencies on the lavatory wall, that is deplorable in television; there is a morbid, garment-rending, often almost ghoulish quality about so much on our screens, a constant harping on disease and disability, on poverty and squalor, on social problems and alleged injustices and deprivations, on gloom and doom and all those fashionable obsessions which can be used to make the viewer feel thoroughly miserable—and, whenever possible, guilty. During the war, there was a prohibition against “spreading alarm and despondency”; with modern television it’s a fine art.

  Could any viewer, listener, or broadcaster fifty years ago have dreamed of a time when an evening’s TV fare (and I have picked it entirely at random) would include Vets in the Wild, Children’s Hospital, an episode of The Bill in which “Hollis uncovers strange goings-on at a crematorium”, a report from South Africa on disabled athletes, an episode of Brookside in which “Mick is outraged at Gemma’s school for their harsh approach to drug-taking”, and on radio a report on brutalities by prison staff, plus life on three psychiatric wards?

  Well, thank you, Noel Coward. I know I and my kind are trivial and light-minded, and that the modern media take their duties seriously, but really…I’m surprised the evening’s spot of homely fun didn’t include a programme on depression, or the victims of religious persecution in Lower Slobovia, or the endangered state of the great crested gob-stopper, or lingering coverage of emaciated beggars crawling with flies, presented
by a reproachful TV commentator. Why not? We have already been given a series on Embarrassing Illnesses (“socially sensitive medical disorders”) with a riveting segment about piles.

  I am not being heartless. I know it is considered proper and even essential that we be shown all these things, and feel care, concern, and compassion—but there’s a difference between presenting a balanced picture of the world’s activities and obsession with the unhealthy and unhappy. In my time I’ve seen enough of the world’s miseries close to, and I don’t need them shoved in my face night after night.

  The depressive tendency in news and documentaries spills over into soaps and dramas, with the emphasis on the sordid and violent in series about the police, hospitals, women’s prisons, and just about every subject that lends itself to tragedy, enacted by coarse, unpleasant plebeians whose mode of communication is all too often an aggressive snarl or a hysterical scream, usually in a Cockney accent. Possibly this is some sort of therapy for the real-life Royle families (who I’m sure are legion), but it brings no comfort to those who see it for what it is: a shocking example, a picture of society, especially working-class society, that is neither attractive nor healthy, accompanied by a steady, persistent dumbing down, a reduction to the lowest common denominator, a presentation of the worst kind of model for impressionable minds, especially in children. Nature has a habit of imitating art, and television is doing nothing to instil good behaviour, good manners, or good nature, to say nothing of morality or decency. Indeed, quite the opposite.

  It is contended, frequently by purveyors of pornography and violence, that their programmes have no corrupting effect on the young. This is a wicked lie. The power of TV is acknowledged, even by the lunatic fringe, when it’s a question of discouraging excessive dieting in thin women, or helping to stamp out smoking, or promote safe sex. If TV had no influence, what would be the point of banning cigarette advertising? No, there is ample evidence of the effect of pornography and violence on the immature. What is less obvious is the slow, steady erosion of values, and the gradual deterioration of behaviour.

  I cannot measure the effect on juveniles of programmes which show teenagers, plainly stoned out of their minds, raving under psychedelic lights, or flailing the air like religious fanatics in adulation of some squealing blonde or dreadlocked caterwauler, or being encouraged to talk smut by a frenzied slattern with a microphone, but I doubt if it’s good. I confess I even worry about such seemingly unimportant things as the sheer ugliness of teen fashions, of mere children with studs in their noses and tongues and navels, of their manipulation by a media which worships false gods like the appalling national lottery, and of their lack of ambition to improve themselves socially and culturally.

  Once it was the ambition of young people to speak well (affected posh it would be considered nowadays), to talk like, say, the old BBC news readers or Alec Guinness or Valerie Hobson. Not now; the broadcast media have entered on a deliberate policy of encouraging regional accents—which are perfectly acceptable so long as they remain universally intelligible and are backed by a decent education. All too often they are neither; the dreadful Estuary English, especially jarring in the quacking female, has replaced received pronunciation, and decent enunciation has followed good diction through the floor.

  Naturally I have noticed most of all the deterioration in Scottish accents. Whether it is thought to be worthy and robustly Caledonian to talk like a Gorbals news vendor, I cannot say, but many Scots do who would once have aspired, if not to the mincing tones of Kelvinside and Morningside, at least to a pleasant articulation free of glottal stops—which interestingly enough have crept into Southern English speech of late, as company for the intrusive “r” on vowel endings. But in Scotland the voices of Alastair Sim and Andrew Cruickshank are heard no more, and even debate in the Scottish Parliament can sound like the rowdier exchanges on the Ibrox terracing.

  Taking it all in all, I don’t seem to approve much in British television, do I? Well, if this has been a diatribe against it, I cannot apologise; it deserves all I have said, and worse, for its degrading of standards and corrupting of values, its often slipshod approach to such diverse things as reporting, grammar, research,* acting, and production, the bland tunnel vision of many interviewers, the growing respect for political correctness, but most of all for its emphasis on the common, the sleazy, the nasty, and the third-rate.

  Is it all bad, then? Of course not; there is much that is good and worthy on television, and immensely talented, dedicated, and painstaking people are responsible for it. They do splendid work, far too much to be mentioned here, so I single out only the great State occasions and displays; politics, if you can bear the sorry spectacle of the Commons, the (not invariably) grovelling interviews and evasive responses, and the dreadful boredom of discussions; sport, for those who are interested, and can take the mind-numbing saturation coverage; arts and history, when the presenter knows his stuff (as they sometimes do); the travel programmes which take us to places we can never hope (or want) to visit; the occasional, very occasional,-soap or comedy series (but where are you, Yes, Minister, The Good Life, and Fawlty Towers?) It’s all subjective, of course; I’ve no doubt there are viewers entranced by apparently endless gardening and cookery and those ghastly teams which vandalise people’s houses in the name of interior decoration. Personally, I reserve my greatest admiration for the technical wizardry which is little short of magical, and is seen to best advantage in the ads.

  But whatever its virtues, the overall effect of television has been disastrous, and if we cannot hold John Logie Baird and Alexander Zworykin directly responsible for the mischief their creations have caused, they still have much to answer for. Whether television is the most evil invention of the twentieth century may be debatable, but what is not is that those who viewed it with misgivings in its early days, Aldous Huxley, C. P. Scott, and T. S. Eliot among them, have had their doubts and fears realised beyond their worst nightmares.

  * Journalist: a term despised by true newspaper folk who define it as a reporter looking for a job.

  * An almost unbelievable example of sloppy research was seen in the teleplay of Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour, when British offic3ers of the Second World War were shown saluting in the palm-down American or Naval fashion, and bare-headed. This was rather like depicting a Bishop in a glengarry instead of a mitre. Were the producers too lazy to ask an elderly ex-Serviceman for technical advice, or were they so amateurish that it didn’t occur to them?

  INTERLUDE

  The Perfect Premier

  HAVING ALREADY chosen my worst prime ministers, I ought to nominate my best. Obviously it is impossible for anyone of my time to go past Churchill, who was the man for the hour, but I have to confess a liking for the style of Sir Alec Douglas-Home, not because he was on the Right, but because he spent a year in office without, on his own admission, doing a damned thing. This would not commend him to New Labour, who count all time lost when they’re not wrecking the country, or to the Tories, who lack Sir Alec’s philosophic vision, so similar to that of the wise old eighteenth-century gentleman who looked back on the early 1750s as the happiest time because, he maintained, there were no politics at all.

  SHOOTING SCRIPT 9

  “Forget Fellini!”

  DINO DE LAURENTIIS is a brisk, bright-eyed human dynamo, and no great admirer of Jane Austen—at least, not when there’s better stuff available. I was in his suite at Claridge’s, waiting to discuss a remake of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and since his phone calls, in machine-gun-like Italian, were occupying him at length, I was beguiling the time with a pocket edition of Emma. He surfaced between calls and barked:

  “Eh, George, what you reading?”

  I held it up, he frowned, rummaged on his desk, and threw across a script. “Forget it! Read that!” he cried, and started shouting into the phone again.

  Red Sonja, said the title on the front, and since the lady promised more excitement than Miss Woodhouse, I was quickl
y engrossed, and had got to the bit where the Priestesses of the Talisman are being entombed alive under the altar by wicked Queen Gedren, when Dino finally hung up and demanded: “Okay, what you think?”

  I said it wasn’t bad, in its way, and he nodded decisively and said: “Schwarzenegger, okay. You take it with you, see what you think, work on it maybe.” Since we had no deal on Red Sonja, I made no sounds of agreement, but I was intrigued, not only because I have a weakness for sword and sorcery but because his mention of Schwarzenegger reminded me that Dino had made a couple of Conan the Barbarian films, the second of them with Dick Fleischer and Jack Cardiff, with both of whom I’d be delighted to work again.

  In the meantime, he was all enthusiasm for 20,000 Leagues. Since Fleischer had directed the definitive version for Disney, I supposed he might be called in for the remake, but I was wrong, for Dino had him docketed for Red Sonja. Dick Lester, who joined us at Claridge’s, declined politely when 20,000 Leagues was proposed, and when he’d gone Dino cried: “Forget Lester!” and took me flat aback by asking if I could go to Rome to confer with his second choice—Federico Fellini.

  I said by all means, but was he sure Fellini was the man for underwater science fiction, which would be rather a change from La Dolce Vita and 8½? Dino waved this aside (“Forget Dolce Vita!”) He had bumped into Fellini recently, and discovered he was crazy about 20,000 Leagues; he’d give his right arm to direct it.

  It seemed unlikely, but you don’t pass up the chance (however slender you suspect it may be) of working with Fellini, so I flew to Rome and was picked up next morning at my hotel by one of Dino’s minions, an immaculate hatchet-faced gentleman who was to be my minder and interpreter, and who’d have been perfect casting for a Martin Scorsese movie. We drove to a street near the old city wall, that astonishing red-brick structure which always strikes me as incongruous alongside Rome’s marvellous marble, both ancient and modern, but is a reminder that this is indeed the Eternal City, which has everything from the breathtaking ruins of the old Forum to the wonders of the Vatican and that remarkable glittering white extravagance of Mussolini’s, whatever it’s called.