A tremendous killer plot

ANDREW Marr and I were chatting the other day about his latest series, NEW ELIZABETHANS ( BBC2, 9pm). When I say “chatting”, conjuring up an image of us as old chums, chewing the fat over a pint and a bag of scratchings in the Golden Hack, you can rest assured I don’t mean that at all, and that I was merely interviewing him on the phone from my kitchen.

He was telling me how this latest project of his – the series and the tie- in book – has been three years in the making.

And I was saying: “Well, it was time well spent, it’s tremendous, I’ve already watched all three episodes.”

Marr was probably thinking: “Good grief, who on earth does this chap think he is, imagining I give a monkey’s for his opinion..?” ( although, bless him, he didn’t actually say that).

New Elizabethans tells the story of Britain since the Queen came to the throne. But it tells it in a refreshingly inventive way.

Rather than take a chronological approach, Marr focuses on influential figures from a variety of specialist fields – business, politics, science, art, cinema, music, murder etc – and explains why each played a pivotal role in this country’s evolution.

Yes, I did say murder. Well spotted. The last woman to hang in the UK, Ruth Ellis, executed in July 1955 for gunning down her violent lover, is among the people profiled in episode one.

Granted, there are better ways to get labelled “influential”. But Ellis’s sorry fate would prove a watershed in British justice.

“Hanging had been very popular in this country,” Marr points out. “But what was done on that July morning, to a young, traumatised and abused woman, horrified and disgusted millions of the Queen’s subjects.”

Marr also finds remarkable parallels between the ill- fated Ellis and one of that era’s most glamorous British stars, actress Diana Dors.

Ellis and Dors even once appeared in the same film, albeit a dreadful one, called Lady Godiva Rides Again, in 1951.

“If you look at the shape of their early lives,” Marr observes, “where they came from, the choices they made and ambitions they shared, Dors and Ellis could have been identical twins...”

Others profiled in episode one include Roy Jenkins, Tracey Emin, Nancy Mitford, Mary Whitehouse and Monty Python’s Graham Chapman.

Who together would have made a rather splendid team, I’d imagine, on CELEBRITY CRYSTAL MAZE, back tonight on Channel 4 ( 10pm).

Instead, can I interest you in Gareth Thomas, Chris Ramsey, Perri Kiely, Jordan Banjo and Laura Whitmore?

Oh, don’t be like that.