Glued To The Box
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Television criticism from the Observer 1979-82. The third and last selection from ten years as the Observer's television critic, the successor to the two previous volumes, Visions Before Midnight and The Crystal Bucket. To avoid repetition individual columns were cut severely and many left out altogether. But certain themes, such as the Barbara Woodhouse phenomenon and the remarkable behaviour of John McEnroe, recurred so hauntingly at the time that it would have been a falsification to mention them only once.
'With the last piece selected for this volume I complete a ten-year tour of duty as the Observer's television critic. By the time it is published I will have moved on to other things, and probably already started regretting that I ever walked away from such a cushy number. More and more often, as the years wore on, people who felt compelled to encourage me in the delusion that I was a hardworking and useful member of the community would ask me how I planned my viewing week. Wasn't it tiring, deciding what to watch and then sitting there watching it? Dutifully I would pretend that it was back-breaking labour, but neither I nor my interlocutor was ever fooled. As the television critic sits there night after night, year after year, other men are inhaling toxic dust down coal mines, testing for hair-line cracks in the top rims of cooling towers, talking in squeaky voices as they breathe helium at the bottom of the North Sea. Women stuntpersons are doing box-falls down oubliettes in Hammer horror movies. Policewomen with punk hairstyles are out acting as decoys to catch psychopathic rapists who will be fined a hundred pounds and bound over to keep the peace. The greatest risk to the television critic is bedsores, or a sprained wrist as he reaches too suddenly for the thin mints." |
Contents
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Author's Note
Introduction All the Anthonys Quite slim indeed St Vitus's gospel Santa and the Seed Scoop it! Face your dog Ultimately and forever Cold gold Washed-up cat Woodhouse walkies Tanya talks Russian Three famous, three high Your brain's got it wrong Nude bathing in Britain Moral imagination All fingers and toes Oodnadatta Fats How do you feel? Master stroke Someone shart JR Idi in exile Hrry Crpntr Borg's little bit extra Big-time Sue There is no death You tested the gyroscope? A horse called Sanyo Music Centre This false peace |
Bottom of the sea
Bouquet of barbed haggis Thank you, wow Fast maggots Donor kebab Very lovely salver Good lug I am a tropical fish Not psychic myself Back in showbiz Yes, sir, that's my foetus While the music lasts Snow job Mass in the crevasse Ferry funny Paint it yellow The Colonels are nuts Wedding announcement Bovis and Basil Whacky world of weather Beastly to everybody Actual flow Hail Columbia! Steve doesn't smoke Ho ho! No kidding Three dots for suspense... Two goals down Forbidden kiss Them again |
Dan's winning lob
Heavenly pink light Wedding of the century The Bagwash speaks Lindi's built-in barbecue Ideological intervention, man Speer checks out Hot pistils Blinding white flash Borgias on my mind A man called Insipid Signals from the void More Borgias Midwinter night's dream Man of marshmallow Nobody understands all Rebarbative reverberations Guardians of party orthodoxy Terms of reference Spirit of Bishop's Stortford Make mine Minder Rumpole collects Ernest Hemingway Schopenhauer Stop treading on the rug! One last look |