Robert Kirby
CHANNELVISION
What I saw of last week’s television had a truly bizarre feel to it. It seemed the nuts had at last fully taken over the asylum. The Hansie Cronje affair alone produced far more than the permissible ratio of televisual dementia to sense. There was, however, one totally sane thing to emerge from the latest revelations: it is the urgent need for someone to send Dr Ali Bacher on a 20-year sabbatical. As a first reaction to match-fixing accusations, it is not even quaint to complain about a lack of “proper protocol”, it’s preposterous. You must go and rest, Ali. Sign in to a good hydro, devour lots of pomegranates and get your priorities irrigated. As a doctor you should know what is meant by iatrogenic.
An example of what raises my concern about Ali Bacher is what might be termed his innocent blind loyalty to his cricket captain. What Bacher now needs to do is get up on the television and radio services, the newspapers, which so dutifully conveyed his sovereign outrage to the nation, and explain how it is that he and his board knew absolutely nothing about this whole unsavoury business. It is very hard to believe they could have been that much out of touch.
Following close on Ali’s heels came Mr Aziz Pahad, who’s always good for a bleak giggle. Aziz’s Bacher-like reaction to Delhigate was to complain nasally about the tapping of the telephones of the South African cricket team. What apparently never struck Pahad was that the Indian authorities might not have been tapping Cronje’s phone, but the phone of the crooked bookie phoning him. Cronje’s contribution was overheard, as it were.
If that wasn’t enough, last Sunday evening’s SABC3 news saw the same Aziz satirically deconstructing two more global themes: the current Zimbabwe debacle and the African renaissance – and having considerable difficulty determining which was which. I always think that if only Samuel Beckett had met Aziz Pahad, he could have made Godot a lot funnier.
About the best of all was the Australian cricket captain, who was reported to have said that the accusations were a blessing in disguise for the South African team: “Nothing like a match-fixing accusation to pull the boys together.” In cricketing circles this is known as putting the Botany back in the Bay.
As I say, a lunatic week. We may now sit back and watch the apologists come out in sentimental defence of our poor misunderstood cricket hero. They might also reflect that the thrill of one-day cricket has for the meantime been utterly destroyed. In future we’ll never be quite sure who our cricketing heroes are playing for: South Africa or their secret bank accounts, never mind the fact that South Africa’s growing international reputation as a crucible of corruption has now been greatly enhanced. For that alone, fuck you, Hansie Cronje.
For the third time in as many weeks I have had to have the speaker replaced in my television set from damage caused by SABC sports reporter Dylan Rogers’s voice. His bandsaw vocal instrument is in desperate need of some kind of electronic therapy. I usually keep the sound very low when there’s any chance Mr Rogers will be talking, but last week he said the words “Mika Hakkinen” quite loudly and, just like the Lady of Shalott’s mirror, my speaker cracked from side to side. Please will someone in the SABC either make Dylan speak through several folded socks or bash him solidly on the head till his knackers fall properly into place?
Now on to Ms Alyce Chavunduka, another SABC3 news dearie in need of remedy. When she reads the news Alyce sounds as if she’s addressing a roomful of two-year-olds; the coy swoops, the upward tendrils of inflection, the melodic curliques of the nursery voice. Stop it.
Am I alone in my growing dislike of Mr Jeremy Maggs as host in M-Net’s Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?? The way he manipulates the contestants is quite awful. He deliberately instills doubt in some of the nervous creatures he confronts; with some others he gives them no time to vacillate when they choose the right answer.
As for Maggs’s boringly repetitive patter,
can they do no better than this? Can M-Net not hire a scriptwriter to give him some new lines? At the very least have his make- up done so that he doesn’t look like he’s come directly from an embalmer.