Remembering a time when brave men were bashful
The weekend on television Jasper Rees
Nowadays we all know how to be ourselves on Skype. In 1944, talking to camera was a novelty. So when British soldiers of the 14th Army in Burma sent messages home to loved ones with the help of a visiting film unit, they were awkward pioneers. Exhumed from obscurity and collated in Messages Home: Lost Films of the
British Army (Channel 4, Sunday), the results 70 years on offered a touching window into a vanished black and white world when brave men were bashful.
It’s hard to imagine the original impact of the films when they were first shown to wives and mothers. These were intimate messages delivered in front of other soldiers, then viewed by large audiences gathered in fleapits.
Nearly 400 reels of short film were shot under the title Calling Blighty. Most were deemed lost but around 50 have resurfaced of which the best find, featuring soldiers from Lancashire, included names and addresses of the participants. Academics of the NorthWest Film Archive were able to track down children and grandchildren, so an ancillary fascination of Messages
Home was to witness their emotional impact on a second generation.
Some of the messages were gloriously frank. “Keep the bed warm,” said a soldier as he wiped his glasses, “and then we’ll get up them stairs.” A short bare-chested man with a thick mop of hair addressed the sweetheart he hoped would be waiting. “I hope you’re down in the front row getting a good eyeful,” said Norman Eller. Their two elderly sons attested a long loving marriage.
For Ann Alsop, it was a chance to see the father she’d never met, killed in action and never mentioned again by her mother. “Trust you’re all well,” said John Hartley jauntily. “I’m in the pink.” It was the first time she’d heard his voice.
These men witnessed horrors and kept mum about them when they got home. So it was a coup to hear veterans bring those days back to life. “I hope it won’t be long before I’ll be seeing you all again,” said Kenneth Chadwick, then a 21-year-old trainee gas fitter from Salford. At 92, he sat alone in a cinema to watch himself speaking to his people. A valuable, moving memorial.
After the adults, the kids. Gogglebox was the spawn of postmodernity: a culture so surfeited with television that it finally got its kicks out of watching couch potatoes watching television. The next step is Gogglesprogs, essentially a case of “Honey, I shrunk the critics”, which continued its run on Channel 4 on Friday night.
The format is identical, but the tone is different. Children place fewer filters on what comes out of their mouths, and with their more innocent world-view they have far less access to knowing sarcasm. Some of the kids in Gogglesprogs are as young as four, and the oldest, 12; several of them cuddle toys.
The results are delightful, partly because the casting has been meticulous. The children all seem comfortable talking in front of the camera. But they are never so selfaware that they turn in a performance, with the possible exception of Cari, Ashton and Darcie, a lovely trio of round-faced philosophers from Neath who were inspired by Eddie Izzard’s marathon running though quizzical about his appearance. “Don’t judge a book by his cover,” reasoned Cari. “That is exactly the moral,” agreed Ashton. They can’t be more than 10.
Such broad-mindedness, absence of entrenched views, and enthusiasm for knowledge are part of the show’s pleasure. Five boys from London failed to match Rachel Riley’s numbercrunching skills on Countdown. “We’re still at secondary,” explained one. The older girls were good on gender politics (Princess Leia’s bikini was deemed too skimpy), though grossed out by the birth of a giraffe at Chester Zoo. “I think I’m going to have problems when I’m older when I’m pregnant,” concluded Stephanie.
The most colourful pair are Jacob and Connor from West Yorkshire. Connor is essentially a ginger-mopped straight man to Jacob, who wears specs and has a direct line to his inner 55-year-old. He loftily dismissed a dating game show as for “single lonely people that can’t find a date”. He asked Connor which of the girls he’d choose. “A wall,” said Connor.
Gogglesprogs is a rare repository of charm and sanity in light entertainment. Now watch them all become celebz.