Robert Kirby
CHANNELVISION
Take five scientists of various disciplines, dump them on a small uninhabited island and set them some survival tasks: among others, build a radio, work out the longitude and latitude of the place and manufacture an insect repellent. Use only those tools or implements that might be found in a long-deserted prison on the island, employ no instruments but brains. Oh yes, only three days to fulfil the tasks.
A truly fascinating television programme resulted, though a fair bit of cheating went on. The scientists had sleeping bags along with them and, no doubt, food and water supplies. But when it came to the use of their inventive powers all seemed fair and square.
Finding latitude was fairly simple, by use of a sighting device made from an old plank, a string plumb-line and a basic protractor made by the careful folding of a square of old paper. By shooting the steady pole star and taking the string-protractor reading, the latitude was revealed. Longitude was a far harder task, and involved the setting up of a basic sundial, getting a time signal from whatever station could be found by use of a concocted radio. This was a crystal set, taking its energy from its barbed-wire aerial and the most quaint use of a sawn-up saucepan to act as a variable coil. It took three days. What the scientists calculated was within a hair’s breadth of the real position of the island.
An effective insect repellent was made by the steam distillation of oils for wild rosemary and the crushing of olives from abandoned trees Lord of the Flies? All in all, truly novel television. The second episode in the series of Rough Science will be on BBC World at 10.30pm on Friday March 16 and at 9.30am on Sunday March 18.
You have to wonder what the SABC is playing at with its continuing series of parody interviews with leading cronies in the Mugabe debacle. Week after week up they come, each one a faithful burlesque of their kind, very reminiscent of the mock political interviews that used to emanate from tamed Soviet television stations, emulated and improved on in the soft-shoe political analysis of the SABC under Piet Meyer and others.
Last week’s Newsmaker had a negatively pressurised sphincter wipe in the shape of SABC reporter Layton Beard, complete with his set of factory-moistened sweetheart questions and his incredible banana-shaped tongue. In response to the first gentle touch of Layton’s lips, Patrick Chinamasa, Zimbabwean Minister of Justice, gave us as superb a caricature of a huffy tin-pot politician as you could hope to find. Beard was incapable of asking a straight question, everything was dripping with treacle. “How do you think you might be able to alter the perception that Zimbabwe is ignoring the rule of law?” How more earnestly can one lick?
I wonder whether it has struck what residual intelligence lurks in the SABC news department that these interviews have a knock-on effect. Patrick Chinamasa and his ilk may always be relied on to present exemplary representations of their species: blustering, self-righteous and credible only as lampoons. But giving airtime to buffoons makes the SABC look extremely foolish as well. Now that it knows where to get hold of him, why doesn’t it crank in Eugene Terre’Blanche, the diametric opposite of Chinwasa? Try at least to have a sense of balance among the political hoodlums.
I’ll give the SABC its due in that the programme did have Tony Leon in, straight after Chinamasa, and that he was given full opportunity to do a very satisfying demolition job. I doubt however that many viewers had lasted that long. Two minutes of Chinamasa would have had most intelligent life desperately reaching for the remote control, unlike unfortunate television critics who have to sit and sit it out.
Some delights are too tasty not to share, even if originally served up on radio. The Tim Modise Show on SAfm last Monday had as its studio guest a worthy academic gent called Dr Neville Alexander, who rejoices under the stimulating title of director of the Project for the Study of Alternative Education in South Africa.
Mr Modise and the good Dr Alexander were discussing the importance of correct pronunciation in English. I hope they won’t mind my rounding off their wisdoms by telling them that it is not pronounced “pronounciation”, unless, of course, like Alexander’s education, the word has now acquired its own “alternative” life.