Watching Brief - Amanda Platell is happy to pay her licence fee
Published 10 June 2002
Singing along to "All You Need is Love", Cherie appeared for all the world like a happy-clappy hippie chick (if dressed in Armani). Not a first lady look
Who would have thought it: the monarchy saved by republicans? With delicious irony, an institution repeatedly denounced as anti-establishment and anti-royal ends up playing a critical role in the resurrection of the monarchy.
With its coverage of the jubilee, the BBC delivered what it does best - pomp and audience - always professionally, occasionally magnificently.
For a football-hating republican, this was the worst of all weekends to be sick in bed with a broken video. But, for once, even I didn't rage at the licence fee. We got value for money - and that's without the World Cup coverage.
There were hiccups. Early on the Monday morning, a Blue Peter reject was sitting in a totally empty, 12,000-seat auditorium as she announced that you could feel the excitement mounting. Sometimes the links went down or the sound failed - why does that never happen when the footy's on? Ted Heath couldn't make it up the three flights of stairs to the makeshift Breakfast with Frost studio and was sitting quietly downstairs. Too quietly. For a moment, everyone thought they had a death, live on TV, so to speak.
David Dimbleby can talk for Britain, and he did, brilliantly. He deserves the MBE just for having to watch the only real mistake of the weekend, that inexorable street parade - Notting Hill Carnival meets the Mall.
In the end, the BBC did us (even those of us who do not count ourselves among the 81 per cent of her subjects who want to keep the monarchy) and Her Maj proud.
The jubilee's climax came with the pop concert on the Monday night. Reputations are made and lost in a live concert broadcast, and this was no exception.
Ruby Wax bombed faster than a Lancaster, Sir Paul McCartney managed to hit almost as few notes as Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, and Dame Edna Everage stole what was left of the show.
Eric Clapton and Rod Stewart trounced McCartney in the battle of the wrinkly rockers, proving that you get the face you deserve - sex and drugs beat lentil burgers any day.
Our First Couple - Tony and Cherie - could not resist their own walkabout, even though it meant they arrived in the royal box after the royal family. There is something rather endearingly American about Cherie, about the way she is totally oblivious to how ridiculous she can look. Singing along to "All You Need is Love", Cherie appeared for all the world like a happy-clappy hippie chick (if dressed in Armani). Not a first lady look.
Worth staying up late to watch the adorable Sultan of Swing, Peter Snow, applying his inestimable talents on Johnny Vaughan's World Cup Extra. No man has ever looked so cute with an arrow in his hand. At least now I understand why England has about as much chance of winning as the Tories did in 2001.
Whenever the new TV thriller Fields of Gold is mentioned, which is rather a lot of late, it is referred to as a drama. In television terms, this usually means the dramatic representation of a fictional series of events, unless otherwise stated. It is not to be confused with a documentary, which deals with facts, and should therefore be judged accordingly.
There is a storm in a test tube over the drama, which is screening on BBC1 on 8 and 9 June. It stars the irresistible Anna Friel and was co-written by Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian, and Ronan Bennett.
Both the Times and the Telegraph have run full-page stories in which the thriller is denounced by one of the BBC's scientific advisers as "strewn with ridiculous errors of fact" and accused of peddling "ludicrous lies on GM". The Guardian has not entered the debate, as Rusbridger some time ago decreed his paper a Fields-free zone. He did, however, write a cross letter to the Telegraph. Bennett rather unwisely responded in the Observer: "The conspiracy to undermine the truth about our GM drama". I mean, anyone would think it was supposed to be real or something.
Now, if Fields of Gold is simply a drama, with dramatic licence, it doesn't matter a jot if the writers stretch the truth or base a fantasy upon known scientific facts. After watching Life and Loves of a She-Devil, I knew I could have my nose straightened or my bum raised, but I did not think I could have my entire face and body redone to make me look like Patricia Hodge.
If, however (as Bennett's overreaction seems to indicate), this is meant to be a factual series - in effect a docudrama - the BBC should say so. Then the charges of anti-GM propaganda hit their target. In the meantime, a drama that wouldn't normally get a mention, given its authorship, has received the most fantastic pre-publicity in the Guardian's two rivals, with a combined readership of more than three million. Gold indeed.
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