A Night In with Alan Bennett 1

here on 2 now a night in with Alan Bennett over the next two months BBC 2 is showing a major retrospective of the work of playwright Alan Bennett to launch the season and Bennett chooses his perfect evenings viewing from the archives in 40 minutes you can see Bob and Terry in a classic episode from whatever happened to the likely lads that's followed by Abigail's party Mike Lee's satirical view of suburban life starring Allison Steadman then there's music in a monitor film from 1965 about the celebrated conductor Sir John Barbirolli and to round off the night in days at the beach a haunting drama by Markham Mowbray but first Alan Bennett shares his thoughts on 39 years of watching television to be required to look back on television is that being asked what are your memories of the hallstand or when you think of the 50s what role was played by the sideboard television is after all part of the furniture and in those early days very much part of it embedded in cabinets behind doors disguised much as the commode used to be disguised looks like a chair it's actually a lavatory and people were slightly shamefaced about television when it came in just as they were about the radio 20 years before and of course some people are still a bit shamefaced about it now we didn't watch the old teller box very much quite frankly were far too busy I mean we watch Yes Minister of course is marvelously funny and Inspector Morse and the news but honestly where does one find the time the sad thing is that it's very often those kind of people whom it falls to legislate about television the herds the Renton's the Rhys mugs of this world not the people of whom television is a lifeline and an educator and an eye opener in common with most of my generation the first site I had of television was the coronation in 1953 I was on leave from the Army and watched a friend's house these days I suppose the ceremony would probably be sponsored there not by Murdoch newspapers but one would probably have to pay for the privilege of watching it and so they've seen the Queen on her coronation day memory that's going to live surely with those children for their lives a so often with the central rituals of English life I was in two minds about at all yes the pageantry was moving the music thrilling but I was a soldier and I knew there was no pageantry without a great deal of bullying poor sods one thought all that drill then I put four in the morning to be screamed at by some strutting sergeant major so what I always feel about the trooping of the color oh no he's quite wrong you see because the men love it they love it in 1953 I could do an imitation of the Archbishop of Canterbury Geoffrey Fisher I here present unto you Queen Elizabeth your undoubted Queen before all you were come this day to do your homage and service are you willing to do the same Archbishop Fisher had earlier in his career been headmaster of Repton the inheritor of the sea of Santa Dustin a keen beater of boys bottoms well not quite a Jimmy Edwards or the Reverend BTM smack it I think I suspected at the time he was an old humbug and he's always been for me emblematic of the establishment an able man a safe pair of hands and not a whiff of self-doubt that mixture of hypocrisy and self-assurance that will always take you to the top in English public life before television what held us together as a nation was the wireless and of course the pictures the first time I remember becoming helpless with laughing was watching George Formby nephew about some money hidden in some chairs now for my next experiment I should like to have a little music but one two three and here we come now this is really something very wonderful this magic is not all that it appears to me but example you see things that you do not see and you see things that you should not see but instance here is something which appears to be very deceptive affair besides but there is and here it is that's of course I'm a country because I come to the country on the wireless the famous humour of Tommy Handley left me cold it still does that kind of relentless chirping has never raises a smile and even as a child of seven I found it very wearing looking back I realized what I disliked about this kind of humour were gags which is hardly surprising because as often as not I just didn't understand them which is the west end of a policeman it's said in the paper this morning policeman bitten by a dog in the West End there'll be thousands of people in London tomorrow they live here laughs because I come across so not nice again men didn't talk like this men didn't really talk at all in leads but women did held firmly by my mother's hand and longing to get away I'd heard so many women telling tale as my father called it and to hear Rob Wilton making fun of it was a kind of liberation one was at least in the same world he said I'll punch your head I said who's he said yours and mine he said he said want to fight us and who he said you rested me he said he said no so we then got to words and he said you can does it can't he said yes I said no he said who I said yes he said you I said oh so of course then I knew the first theater I ever went into was the Leeds Theatre Royal Adelaide for blue and gold Victorian theatres now not merely demolished but the building that replaced it demolished to each year we would take by my grandma to see the pantomime still going strong in May and we would climb the wooden stairs to the gallery where the steepness of the auditorium never felt to startle so that you felt like gulls perched on a cliff face at the Royal I saw Mother Goose starring Norman Evans who had no teeth and a little panda puppet the tradition of toothless nurse still happily surviving today in Les Dawson Norman Evans always incorporated his new into the pant these men they don't they don't know what it is no you know it may be fanciful but I see in this childhood preference for the familiar some hint of the stuff I later came to write for television plays of ordinary life dull lives as I originally planned to call talking heads so William Halley once editor of The Times and a former director-general of the BBC said of newspapers that to be popular they need do no more than to be accurate whether that's true of newspapers nowadays I'm not sure nobody could accuse the son of being accurate but it's certainly true of comedy when accuracy of dialogue and precision of observation a half the battle and there's no need for gags very often one can just tell the tale

Channel: nofishnochips

Views: 32,846

Rating: 4.8873239 out of 5

Keywords: Alan Bennett, television, comedy, drama

Id: v2JfKRJ7EZw

Length: 9min 59sec (599 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 27 2009