Of Barnaby tosh
this, actually a drama-documentary, that the scale and dreadful loss of life is brought home. The two-hour film drew on testimony from the 162 survivors to recreate the sinking of the unsinkable. With the benefit of computer generated imaging, the full horror of this episode was plain.
The programme was able to show minute by minute, deck by deck, how the ship came to grief. It’s like trying to look away from a terrible car crash. You don’t want to, but you steal a glance.
The narration was particularly enjoyable. Some of the lines were priceless. “Ships have no brakes,” was a favourite. I do hope that situation has been rectified.
BY FAR the most revealing line related to the star of the show: the iceberg: “It [the Titanic] doesn’t run into it. It runs over it.” There we were thinking it was a straightforward collision with a big lump of ice.
If you want a companion piece to tonight’s ITV1 drama extravaganza, I strongly recommend it, but it does have uncomfortable moments, too.
There’s no easy way to move from the Titanic to The Hairy Bikers, only to say that in a few years both could pass themselves off as Captain Birdseye.
The very hirsute Dave and Si have a new series, called
( BBC2, Tuesday). It really must have been a good lunch to have arrived at that title. After a few series in Britain, they’re touring the Continent and it’s great fun.
It’s taken me a while to become a fully paid-up fan, but I now love them for all their enthusiasm and bad jokes.
Cooking shows can get awfully dull. If you put Gary Rhodes and Nigel Slater in the same food series, the country would lapse into a permanent vegetative state.
Last week Dave and Si toured the “Low Countries”, and among their many interviewees was a cook who talked like the chef off The Muppet Show. Hilarious. I bet you Gary Rhodes can’t do that.
Bakeation
The Hairy Biker’s