Downed by, of all things, a Surrey heatstroke, I missed my flight home and spent an extra week chilling out in the same green Surrey.
Out of touch with things South African (and you would be surprised at how little coverage we get in the land of the Blairs), I spent some time watching
television last week and now feel like one of those high-specific gravity journalists who speculate engagingly on current events on The Editors each Sunday. My list for the most fascinating, if not revealing, United Kingdom news stories of last week includes the following delights.
In South Africa the news dished up on telly seems parochial in the extreme, what with the SABC news now devoting an entire 90-second slot to “the rest of the world”. It was surprising, therefore, to see that the SABC isn’t alone in oddball priorities. In England the horrors of the Middle East conflict and one or two other local and international stories got summarily shoved off the television news front pages by ward-to-ward coverage of the liver transplant performed on the long-retired English star footballer, George Best.
Since abandoning the soccer field in favour of numberless barrooms, at 56 “Georgie” had drunk his original factory-installed liver into saffron oblivion. A single extra drink could decant what remained of him into his grave. Up came a donor and Georgie was up for rescue. Sky News and the BBC celebrated. Such was the enthusiasm of the coverage you would have thought George W Bush had declared himself a practising gay.
That the grosser instincts of British cheap journalism still enjoy boom times was demonstrated when media attention focused on the long-awaited selection of a suitable monument to the 20th century’s most invidious media-pest, Princess Di. It is now five years since Di and Dodi got tenderised and the argument as to how best she should be immortalised for an adoring British public has been both anxious and screechy. Eventually, and in some desperation, a final decision was taken by New Labour’s secretary for the arts and a “design” submitted by an American got the green flag.
Diana’s serene life will be celebrated by an oval-shaped stone drain laid out alongside Hyde Park’s Serpentine river. Cunning pumps will make the water on one side of the oval run quickly, on the other slowly. These two speed settings are metaphysical in intent and, according to the representative of the American designer, will signify the extraordinary compass of Princess Di’s personality, that is from a blocked drain to a working one. The drains will be set about with some flowering cherry trees, presumably so that Di’s love for small, soft pink things will also be recalled.
Africa did make a couple of rather embarrassing appearances when Zambia’s President, Levy Mwanawasa lurched up on Sky News to explain why he was refusing to accept plane-loads of genetically modified grain for his starving people. Bulging dangerously in his suit, Levy said that there was no way he would allow Zambia’s delicate agricultural balance to be upset by allowing his people to eat this hazardous waste sent to Zambia by Western so-called humanitarians. Let them eat cabbage?
Levy made an encore appearance a couple of days later when, on BBC 24, he explained how there was absolutely nothing his government could do about Zambia’s million and a half street children.
Big story of the English week was last Friday’s sentencing to jail of a 17-year-old youth who had killed a 90-year-old widow, cut out her heart and drank of her blood. By conducting this culinary ritual the lad hoped to become a vampire and live forever. Shortly after committing the crime he pleaded with his girlfriend to bite his neck, which would indicate he needed to read up a bit more on the correct snack order for vampires.
You cannot begin to imagine the feeding frenzy of the British tabloids on that story. The actual crime would have been easier to contemplate than the bloodbath in the Daily Mirror and The Sun.
My proudest moments of the week were in watching former South African actor Henry Goodman interviewed about the next sensational chapter in his career. Speaking about how he lasted only two weeks in the Broadway production of The Producers before being hoofed out, Henry was at his humble best as he spoke about the “ovations” with which his performances had nonetheless been received in New York.
The greater breadth of Henry’s staggering modesty was to be admired in his line about how he had dealt with this resounding kick in the butt. Verbatim: “My career has been rewarded by 30 years of superlatives. I suppose I just had to accept some criticism.” A dose of liquid paraffin would also help.
That makes at least three repellent South African thespian exports I can think of. Janet of Arc Suzman and Sir Antony “Humbleness Itself” Sher clearly have some competition for their thrones.
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