Warm memories of 1963
TELEVISION has a strange relationship with the weather. Particularly with the extreme variety. I was reminded of this just the other morning, while watching BBC Breakfast. Presenter Naga Munchetty and whoever that bloke is she sits next to were talking about Storm Eunice, and giving us the old don’t-leave-home-unlessyour-journey-is-entirely-necessary spiel.
Moments later, they flashed across to a reporter called Tomos, who at that precise moment was standing, but only just, on the storm-lashed seafront at Porthcawl. “It’s getting stronger and stronger the longer we stay out here!” yelled Tomos, being buffeted by the elements so ferociously that you feared he’d be in Port Talbot by the time he handed back to the studio.
Another wind-whipped fellow, this one called John, then delivered much the same report from Ilfracombe in Devon. “If I didn’t have to be here, I wouldn’t be!” John cried.
At no point did any of these people – not Tomos, not John, not Naga, not whoever that bloke is that Naga sits next to – seem to appreciate the irony here. I’m fairly sure I already know what a storm looks like. I’d imagine you do as well. So to send poor saps like these to go and stand in one – adding nothing to what we know, merely illustrating what a stupid idea that is – surely defines “unnecessary journey” to a T.
But that’s precisely the strange relationship I’m talking about.
TV purports to be horrified by extreme weather – by the damage it can do, by the reasons for it
– and yet on a certain level it loves it. Extreme weather serves up spectacular pictures and human drama – and many years from now, long after the horror has abated, some will even feel a curiously nostalgic glow as they look back on the most horrendous examples they’ve lived through.
In the case ofTHE BIG FREEZE: WINTER ’63 (C5, 9pm), those “some” include Joanna Lumley, Pete Waterman and Gloria Hunniford, sharing their recollections of when Britain was snowed up for 10 weeks.
That winter was the coldest here since 1739. Temperatures plummeted, rivers iced over, the country was brought to halt.
The impact ranged from frustratingly disruptive (all major sport was called off for three months) to utterly devastating (a fatal train crash, the decimation of our wildlife).
And yet, while obviously acknowledging the worst of what happened, everyone here remembers the lighter side of the winter as well – the snowball fights, the skating, the tin-tray toboggans.
Also, Pete says he found it amusing to stick his sister’s tongue to a frozen window pane. I guess you had to be there.