I love Captain Mainwaring – not that I can afford to watch him on TV these days due to the pricey packages
LIKE other decent ratepayers,
I find myself waking each morning amazed that there’s no rioting in the streets. Somewhere along the line, the country has lost its backbone and, instead of throwing things willy – or even nilly – just sits and grumbles in the privacy of its own home.
If you have a goat about your person there are many things that can get it. And one that gets mine is the amount of money we pay to watch the telly nowadays.
Back in the days of television rationing, all we paid for was the TV licence. We only got three or four channels, but we were happy and had enough money left over to buy lemonade, sausage rolls, and a fortnight’s holiday to Fife. Now, we’re forced to pay so much to watch telly, we don’t eat and are lucky if we can afford a day-trip to Cumbernauld.
I witter in the wake of Sky beating BT Sport for the right to broadcast Scottish football. Means nothing to me, as I won’t be seeing any of it. At the moment, I don’t have a working television set-up. The satellite dish on the roof is rusting away. The cables languish at the wall. I can’t even connect an aerial to the TV as a previous company cleverly snipped off the cable. Oh, and my TV doesn’t work any more (circuit board apparently).
I could get it all repaired, I dare say, but every time I phone for quotes
I end up having to be revived by smelly salts. I’ve investigated Freeview for about £100 a box but that requires an aerial – and a TV apparently – and, besides, it doesn’t have the football and seems mainly to consist of rerun comedies from Victorian times.
I’m told you can watch European football on illicit internet streams, but friends say these typically have Turkish commentary and a picture that dies at crucial moments.
I watch the first three games of Match Of The Day every week on my laptop and that’s it: £12.56 a month licence fee for that.
Now the BBC is threatening to take away free licences for the over-75s, while friends pay – as I once did – 60, 70 or 80 quid a month for TV packages (not noticing when the cable or satellite companies hike up their direct debits), plus the TV licence on top of that, and another tenner for Netflix or whatever to watch films and TV series that we out-of-the-loop plebs never get to see.
It’s completely out of hand. But, as usual, we just put up with it. I’ve had my Lidl executive-style pitchfork and burning brand set standing ready at the door for years, and still the call never comes. The trouble is, everybody’s too busy sitting in front of their tellies to get off their butts and do anything.
Of course, in reality-style life, this column doesn’t endorse rioting or, indeed, leaving the house generally. But surely somebody has to speak out about this ongoing scandal?
Dad’s blarney
JACOB REES-MOGG and I have much in common. We’re both super-rich, were educated at Eton, and remain lifelong Conservatives.
Actually, would you excuse me for a moment? “Mother, have you been tampering with my opening paragraphs again?” Sorry about that. Ignore these unintentionally interesting opening lines, except to note that while I was educated at eatin’ – sausage rolls and fish fingers mainly – there’s one other thing I have in common with Rees-Mogg: an admiration for Captain Mainwaring from Dad’s Army.
When his gang of rebel Brexiters were likened to the old Home Guard, Rees-Mogg candidly averred: “I’ve always admired Captain Mainwaring.”
The nation, as represented disgracefully by its media, tittered. Ridiculously, one bovine fool even asked Rees-Moggering if he was planning to hold a coo. Why would he do that? And why is it wrong to admire Mainwaring?
He’s a super role-model. Pompous? Perhaps. Well-meaning?
Unarguably. Decent? Yes. Bald? Magnificently so.
Oddly enough, Graham Lord’s biography of Arthur Lowe is on my desk in front of me. Lowe’s portrayal of Mainwaring mirrored his own personality, of which one associate said: “He was just rather dull: a quiet, slightly introverted man who lived a secret life in his head.”
Lowe’s son Stephen added: “He was fixated by unimportant detail, had an inflated sense of his own importance, tripped over things and banged his head.”
Does it not bring a tear to the eye? This is how to raise the children. Teachers of Eton, keep this picture at the front of your minds when moulding the nation’s future Rees-Moggs.
Stars in my eyes
I ALMOST became uncharacteristically excited about the new developments on Calton Hill, Edinburgh, as reported in that Herald newspaper.
The City Observatory has been refurbished and will be open to the public. There’s also to be an art gallery or something. It’s certainly a major coup for the otherwise dull capital city, giving new force to the famous old line: “There was a coup on yonder hill.”
Many years ago, I was dispatched to write a morally instructive feature about the old City Observatory and the Royal Observatory, on Blackford Hill, that superseded it.
It was one of only two days in which I actually enjoyed my job (the other was an assignment that involved going through a portal to another universe at Rosslyn Chapel; long story; tell you about it when I get back).
There’s nothing a journalist loves more than an enthusiast, and I got my copy’s worth from both the professionals at Blackford and the local amateur astronomers who met at Calton.The latter building, by William Playfair, could be Zeus’s hoose. It’s like a Greek temple, ken?
It takes a lot to get me oot the hoose and, despite living in Edinburgh, I never visit its art galleries or, indeed, anything really, as there are always other people in attendance and I don’t like them.
But, finding myself beset with uncomfortable feelings of enthusiasm, I fear I will find myself forced to take a look at the refurbished City Observatory.