Disgust? Prof Mary looked like she’d found a manky banana in Waitrose
Terry Pratchett used to say that he started work as a reporter for his local newspaper on a Monday morning and saw his first dead body that afternoon.
‘Work experience really meant something in those days,’ he grumbled. For me, in the early 1980s, it took a couple of weeks. I was sent by my news editor to interview a retired farm worker, whose wife of 50 years had died, for her obituary.
‘She’s in here,’ he said, ushering me into his living room where the open coffin stood on his dining table.
Professor Mary Beard, surveying sculptures and paintings that depict taboo subjects in Forbidden Art (BBc2), made a surprising admission. ‘I’m not sure I’ve seen a dead body,’ she said.
artist Daphne todd gazed at her in puzzlement. they were discussing her painting, moving and reverential, of her 100-year-old mother’s corpse, propped up on pillows in a nightie at a chapel of rest. ‘I don’t think she’d have liked this painting,’ Daphne said cheerfully. Mary couldn’t hide her discomfort.
I found it mournfully beautiful — but, on the other hand, I find it difficult to see rotting flesh in the zombie horror series, the Walking Dead. It’s my theory that TV’s obsession with mortuary scenes in crime shows, or graphic special effects depicting dismembered limbs, is a direct result of the erasing of death from our everyday world.
In contrast to 40 years ago, very few people now display the body of a loved one on the dining table for visitors to see. But a bloody autopsy is teatime viewing.
Much of the imagery of this documentary, the first of two, doesn’t bear thinking about over breakfast. turner prize-winning artist Martin creed screened his films of people performing bodily functions, as Prof Mary squirmed in her seat.
he was obviously concerned that she wouldn’t think him eccentric enough, so he wore a giant Mad hatter’s topper with felt tip squiggles on his face and a clothes peg on his ear. the prof was too polite to ask why he was so desperate for attention. Perhaps his mother ignored him as a child.
Some of the pictures were repulsive, and were created to be so. But the programme achieved a genteel tone, because Prof Mary’s disgust never rose above the level of a shopper finding a manky banana in the fruit section at Waitrose: ‘Oh dear! I’m not sure I like the look of that . . .’
It was left to artist tracey emin to make the most telling point: art can be ugly but it’s most dangerous when it is deceitful — like the edited images of fakely perfect celebrity lives on social media.
Kate Garraway edited out any imperfections from the career of John Barnes, as she presented Life Stories (ITV) for the first time. taking over from Piers Morgan, she lacked the edge and the prickle of her predecessor. this interview with the former Liverpool footballer was no more than an hour-long tummy tickle.
Barnes opened with a few roistering anecdotes about the wild old days, when players went out boozing till dawn. he once turned up for a practice session, he said, dressed as tina turner after a fancy dress party.
‘you can get away with anything if you are a good footballer,’ he bragged. Kate chuckled along. a less indulgent interviewer would have asked him if he really got away with it — did the partying leave scars?
What about contemporaries such as tony adams and Paul Gascoigne, whose lives descended into a hell of alcoholism? John Barnes is an articulate and thoughtful man. he could have been coaxed into a far more interesting discussion.