‘Aussie Rules’ gets whole new meaning

TELEVISION, would you believe it, has added an entirely new angle to sport viewing. Thanks to the imaginative way the ball was enhanced at Newlands during one of the Tests between South Africa and Australia, “Aussie Rules” takes on a whole new meaning.

Allow me to shyly confess a certain antipathy to cricket.

Any game involving more than 20 people that lasts five days and can end in a draw if the weather changes or the light is judged inadequate by two officials in sunhats requires a quasi-religious involvement that I lack. However, rules are rules, especially when the game concerned is “professional”, meaning incomegenerating, and with a vast interlocking set of commercial interests spanning continents.

Curiously, some of these commercial interests involve various forms of fraud linked to betting on certain outcomes. One recalls stalwart South African cricket heroes of the past only too happy to be bought, proving that such choices can even be made by fine people from good families with lovely homes. But this is a television column, not a pulpit and, thanks to television with its many cameras, each one of us can escape the tedium of cricket by watching out for “Aussie Rules” in action. Way to go, bru!

Moving on to another form of cooking brings us – and not for the first time – to Diners, Driveins and Dives. For this amateur cook Triple D, as the series is known to its many fans, may be the only food show that actually demonstrates the preparation of outstanding food.

And by “demonstrates” I mean the genuine transfer of skills and information, rather than the grandstanding that dominates so many food series on television.

It helps that the presenter is a cook himself, a fact he shyly reveals from time to time with off the cuff statements like “stick it under the salamander at 270º” and wild cries of “Aleppo pepper!”

More the point is his splendid enthusiasm for the originality he encounters as he travels across the US meeting the owner-chefs of small restaurants who bravely elect to share their skills and ingredient lists with him. The show has a format designed to thrill the latent chef that lurks within us all.

We encounter the inviting exterior of the diner and meet the happy customers. There’s some banter, some high-speed professional kitchen action, invariably in confined spaces, and the final product is tasted by the presenter – live – with all sorts of juices running down his chinnychin-chin.

Invariably, since there can be no doubt that the restaurant has been carefully chosen prior to the shoot, the food item is outstanding, leaving this hack with a powerful desire to repeat the recipe.

The demo is sufficient to give the aspirant home cook a pretty good idea of what’s involved and indeed, with some careful judgement and a couple of replays on the PVR you can attempt this stuff at home.

Finally, the recently deceased and much mourned Professor Stephen Hawking. The best salute I saw on television was a BBC short documentary of the man teaching a physics class in 1983. Even then he was massively disabled, though still able to speak in his own voice (with an interpreter). What we got was a demonstration of optimism and confidence, conveyed – even through his interpreter – with great and unexpected humour.