Carr bang on the money
IN THE early 20th century, traders and missionaries noticed new religions popping up across the South Pacific. Islanders held day-long dances, stopped going to work, slaughtered all their livestock and threw money into the sea. They said a massive shipment of goods was on its way to them in boats.
There would be guns and axes, tinned food, lanterns, medical equipment, radios – all the stuff the European bosses owned and they didn’t. Westerners have spent almost a century laughing about these “cargo cults” as they’re called, unaware, perhaps, that we worship the same things.
THE PRICE IS RIGHT (Saturday, C4) is a game show all about our love of stuff. It’s been going since the Fifties and from China’s Shopping Street to the stern-sounding Bulgarian This Is The Price, it’s popped up in similar formats across the developed world.
It’s easy to be po-faced about materialism, particularly around Christmas time but perhaps we should just accept that everyone’s a cargo cultist and have fun doing it.
That seems to be the idea behind this latest reincarnation of the gameshow, hosted by comedian Alan Carr. I feared when I heard that Channel 4 were reviving the format that it might be a nasty affair. You could imagine a panel of witty young comics doing it all in a spirit of irony while oozing disdain for people who get excited about new washing machines.
That’s not Carr’s style, though, and nothing about the show looked tongue-in-cheek. Why should it, either? After all, the basic guessing game is something everyone does. We do it when we go around the supermarket. We do it when we watch Antiques Roadshow.
It’s also a set-up that, for all its simplicity, produces surprising results. When was the last time you saw a roomful of people cheering about the price of light bulbs?
How many competitions can you win, not by being clever but by giving the daftest answer possible? How many experiences nowadays can rival the joy of spinning a wheel and seeing what number it stops on? For simple Saturday night fun, this presses all the right buttons.
The lochs are Scotland’s gift to the world. So said Paul Murton, at the start of GRAND TOURS OF SCOTLAND’S LOCHS (Saturday, BBC2), although I was tempted to say that the lochs had some competition. What about Lulu and Tunnock’s Caramel Wafers?
The world owes Scotland a few thank you letters, in my view, but certainly this little half-hour gem makes a strong case for the nation’s wilderness. Murton’s journeys began north of Oban, where a sea inlet turns into the mighty Glen Etive. It’s a landscape sculpted over millions of years and, if anything other than geography linked the various stop-offs, it was an appreciation of time.
At Bonawe, halfway around the crescent-shaped fjord, he met some of the last charcoal makers, tending oak fires in the anxious way farmers tend to the spring lambs.
At Inverawe Smokehouse, the remarkable Robert CampbellPreston spoke about the 24/7 cold-smoking process and the different characters and temperaments of each fire with what could only be called love.
As a finale, high up above Rannoch Moor, Paul sat with photographer Murray Wilkie, who camped out in all weathers to capture the perfect light on the mountains. The scenery was breathtaking but it’s the people who live there who truly light it up.