That engaging soul, Denis Beckett, is back in our living rooms. A new and very welcome season of Beckett’s Trek (SABC3, 21:30) began last week Thursday, its first programme having Denis traipsing around Tanzania in a somewhat disheartening bid to make sense of a country still crushed under the late Julius Nyerere’s socialist dreamplan.
After umpteen years of independence, most of Tanzania’s “indigenous” business enterprise is confined to the running of small pavement kiosks. Apparently virtually all major Tanzanian business enterprise is in the hands of the Asian commercial oligarchy, an arrangement showing little evidence of change.
As he lunges around our continent, Denis Beckett always reminds me of Balzac’s eternal character Old Goriot, who derived much social and mercantile advantage by pretending to be stone deaf. That way the sly old fellow could overhear muted remarks not meant for him and thereby stay a step ahead of the game.
Having made a speciality out of looking utterly gormless on top of being phenomenally ill-dressed, Denis Beckett uses a variation of the same technique.
As calculated as it is, his blink-eyed befuddlement fools people into believing he’s less callid than he seems. They tend to let themselves ramble on more easily.
In fact, I have only one small tip. What Denis might well want to improve and polish is the distinctly biblical habit he shares with many other white gentlefolk, which is always to remember to speak slowly and clearly when addressing black peoples.
I say distinctly biblical because people like Denis so faithfully replicate the specialised communicative techniques first introduced to Africa and other dark continents by early Scottish missionaries.
Rule Number One of the Christian Missionaries Handbook reads: “Always use a very slow and patient voice when giving instructions or explaining complicated white people’s ideas to one of the heathens.”
After a bit more rehearsal Denis will have got that rule down to a fine art. When he spoke to George, his Tanzanian driver, he was already down to 40 words per minute.
Where he needs no practice at all is in obeying the injunctions of Rule Number Two which states: “If in your godly enthusiasm you should happen to use elaborate words like ‘overbearing’ and ‘patronisation’ when addressing a heathen, immediately explain the longer word by means of several shorter, simpler ones so that the heathen is left in no doubt as to what you have been telling him.” Denis is extremely good at that one and I must say I enjoy watching these methodologies develop in Denis’s repertoire. They add a few extra swivels to his otherwise impeccable political repressions.
Despite the fact that come December 31 we will only have completed the 99th year of this century, all otherwise intelligent television and radio life has abandoned itself to the general millennium fever.
The BBC is not excluded and recently has been running a series called Profiles of the Century.
The latest in these is a two-part feature on Frank Sinatra, one of a handful of vocal performers who lifted popular art far beyond its accustomed limitations. Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald and others, along with the music and lyrics of the Cole Porters and the Gershwins, made of popular songs the lieder of this century.
It was a sorely won accomplishment which the bulk of today’s popular music icons seem determined to debase, almost jealously, to the lowest common denominator. Dumbing down doesn’t only occur in the media.
For this programme we should be grateful, because millennium or not, any programme on Mr Sinatra is welcome.
The first of two BBC examinations of the man covered his professional life from its early start as a member of the close- harmony group, The Hoboken Four, to the point where, after a profound career slump, he began a quite incredible comeback in collaboration with Capitol Records and, notably, the gifted arranger, Nelson Riddle.
The second of the two-part programme is this Sunday, November 21, at various times on BBC World. If you missed the first, half a loaf is definitely better than none.
Quite a few complaints have come to my coral-like ear about yet another e.tv programme cock-up.
This time, something called Black Fox (broadcast on November 9) was publicised by e.tv as being an in-depth documentary about Mr Adolf Hitler, narrated by Mrs Marlene Dietrich.
As it turned out, Black Fox was a dated piece starring Christopher Reeve. When asked why by an Mail & Guardian journalist, e.tv said they were just as surprised as everyone else. Take a tin star, Marcel.