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      • White Shorts of Leni Reifenstahl
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      • Show Me the Horror
      • The Measure of A.D. Hope
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Home>>Essays>>Glued To The Box

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

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

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  • Home
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    • Profiles >
      • The Texture of Reality
  • Books
    • The Fire Of Joy
    • Unreliable Memoirs
    • Falling Towards England
    • May Week Was In June
    • North Face of Soho
    • The Blaze of Obscurity
    • Latest Readings
    • Cultural Amnesia
    • Play All
    • A Point Of View
    • Flying Visits
  • Essays
    • Visions Before Midnight
    • The Crystal Bucket
    • Glued To The Box
    • The Metropolitan Critic
    • At the Pillars of Hercules
    • As of This Writing
    • The Meaning of Recognition >
      • Introduction
      • Polanski and the Pianist
      • Fantasy in the West Wing
      • Pushkin's Deadly Gift
      • Great Sopranos of Our Time
      • A Memory Called Malouf
      • Bing Crosby's Hidden Art
      • Larkin Treads the Boards
      • The Iron Capital of Bruno Schulz
      • Criticism a la Frank Kermode
      • Fast Talking Dames
      • Rough Guides to Shakespeare
      • General Election Sequence 2001
      • Primo Levi and the Painted Veil
      • A Big Boutique of Australian Essays
      • Cyrano on the Scaffold
      • A Nightclub in Bali
      • Aldous Huxley Then and Now
      • A Man Called Peter Porter
      • Philip Roth's Alternative America
      • The Miraculous Vineyard of Australian Poetry
      • Save Us From Celebrity
    • The Revolt of the Pendulum >
      • The Question of Karl Kraus
      • John Bayley's Daily Bread
      • Kingsley and the Women
      • Canetti Man of Mystery
      • Camille Paglia Burns for Poetry
      • The Guidebook Detectives
      • Zuckerman Uncorked
      • The Flight from the Destroyer
      • Saying Famous Things
      • Insult to the Language
      • The Perfectly Bad Sentence
      • Happiness Writes White
      • All Stalkers Kill
      • Best Eaten Cold
      • White Shorts of Leni Reifenstahl
      • Made in Britain, More or Less
      • Movie Criticism in America
      • Show Me the Horror
      • The Measure of A.D. Hope
      • Robert Hughes Remembers
      • Modern Australian Painting
      • On Diamond Jim McClelland
      • The Voice of John Anderson
      • Niki Lauda Wins Going Slowly
      • Damon Hill's Bravest Day
      • Jonathan James-Moore
      • Ian Adam
      • Pat Kavanagh
      • Starting with Sludge
    • Guest Writers >
      • Zoe Williams
      • Russell Davies
      • Bryan Appleyard
      • Marina Hyde
      • Bruce Beresford
      • Michael Frayn
  • Poetry
    • Poetry Collections >
      • Fin de Fiesta
      • Injury Time
      • Sentenced to Life >
        • Japanese Maple
        • Sentenced to Life
        • Procedure for Disposal
        • Leçons des ténèbres
        • Driftwood Houses
        • Event Horizon
        • Neuland
        • Echo Point
        • Change of Domicile
        • Holding Court
        • Too Much Light
        • Nature Programme
        • My Latest Fever
        • Nina Kogan's Geometrical Heaven
        • The Emperor's Last Words
        • Winter Plums
      • Nefertiti in the Flak Tower >
        • Whitman and the Moth
        • The Falcon Growing Old
      • Angels over Elsinore
      • The Book of My Enemy >
        • Recent Verse
        • Verse Letters
      • Opal Sunset
      • Other Passports >
        • Recent Verse >
          • The Book of My Enemy has been Remaindered
        • Parodies etc.
        • Earlier Verse
        • Verse Diaries
      • Fan Mail >
        • To Russell Davies: a letter from Cardiff
        • To Martin Amis: a letter from Indianapolis
        • To Pete Atkin: a letter from Paris
        • To Prue Shaw: a letter from Cambridge
        • To Tom Stoppard: a letter from London
        • To Peter Porter: a letter to Sydney
    • Epic Poems >
      • The River in the Sky
      • Gate of Lilacs
      • The Divine Comedy >
        • Hell - Cantos 1-3
        • Purgatory - Cantos 1-3
        • Heaven - Cantos 1-3
      • Poem of the Year
    • Books About Poetry >
      • Somewhere Becoming Rain
      • Poetry Notebook >
        • Listening for the Flavour
        • Five Favourite Poetry Books
        • Velvet Shackles
        • Meeting MacNiece
        • The Donaghy Negotiation
    • Poetry Readings
    • Articles on Poetry
    • Back from The Web
    • Guest Poets >
      • Daniel Brown
      • Liane Strauss
      • Les Murray
      • Peter Porter
      • Alan Jenkins
      • Stephen Edgar
      • John Stammers
      • Simon Barraclough
      • Isobel Dixon
      • Christian Wiman
      • Olivia Cole
      • Judith Beveridge
      • Peter Goldsworthy
      • Kapka Kassabova
  • Lyrics
    • My life in lyrics
    • Selected Song Lyrics >
      • Dancing Master
      • Faded Mansion
      • Have You got a Biro I can Borrow?
      • I Have to Learn to Live Alone Again
      • Hill of Little Shoes
      • History & Geography
      • I See the Joker
      • Laughing Boy
      • My Brother's Keeper
      • National Steel
      • Nothing Left to Say
      • Sessionman's Blues
      • Song for Rita
      • Stranger in Town
      • Sunlight Gate
      • The Egoist
      • The Eye of the Universe
      • The Ice Cream Man
      • Femme Fatale
      • The Master of the Revels
      • Thirty-year Man
      • Winter Spring
  • Video
    • Talking in the Library >
      • Series One
      • Series Two
      • Series Three
      • Series Four
      • Series Five
    • Postcards
    • CJ on YouTube
  • Radio
    • A Point Of View
    • Book Talk