Post by BillyNiblick on Feb 11, 2008 14:54:13 GMT
As you might know, I'm something of a fan of the majestic Nancy Banks-Smith, the Guardian's TV critic of the past umpteen years. She writes often about Coronation Street, with a pithy knack for observation made with a brilliantly crafted turn of phrase. She clearly has a deep affection for The Street. I was reading this terrific piece www.guardian.co.uk/media/2001/nov/21/broadcasting.g23by Nancy about her time as a TV critic, and couldn't help noticing the telling reference at the end of the piece :
(Dennis) Potter, who had casually catapulted me into all this, believed in TV. All his life he wrote wholly and wholeheartedly for it and, when he was dying, he mischievously blackmailed the BBC and Channel 4 into kissing, cooperating and promising to transmit two plays he had not even written.
At the very last moment of his very last play, his dying hero is swirled down a dizzying vortex, faster and faster, past the highlights of his life. A boy in a tree, a girl in a bra, Max Wall walking, Ronnie Ronalde whistling and England scoring one stupendous try at Twickenham as the crowd roared. And at this, the preview audience, who had been slightly spooked by the whole situation, suddenly all roared, too.
Until you are whirled down that vortex, you do not know what you will remember.
Perhaps I will remember my father watching The Brains Trust on a monochrome postage stamp of a screen. He was sketchily educated, I suppose, but ravenous for knowledge. In the quiet, smoky afternoons, between the pub shutting and opening, he would read my Arthur Mee's children's encyclopedia and regale the bemused boozers with bits of Omar Khayyam he thought they would enjoy: "I often wonder what the vintners buy, One half so precious as the goods they sell." Or I might remember my husband watching the first moon shot and feeling glad he had seen that. He was on first-name terms with the Pleiades from wartime flying and, the first time we met, he spelled out the geography of the skies to me as we walked home.
Or perhaps I will only see Coronation Street unravelling, like 40 years of film, until Ena Sharples turns up in a hairnet saying: "Half a dozen fancies and no eclairs." I have always wondered why no eclairs.
At the very last moment of his very last play, his dying hero is swirled down a dizzying vortex, faster and faster, past the highlights of his life. A boy in a tree, a girl in a bra, Max Wall walking, Ronnie Ronalde whistling and England scoring one stupendous try at Twickenham as the crowd roared. And at this, the preview audience, who had been slightly spooked by the whole situation, suddenly all roared, too.
Until you are whirled down that vortex, you do not know what you will remember.
Perhaps I will remember my father watching The Brains Trust on a monochrome postage stamp of a screen. He was sketchily educated, I suppose, but ravenous for knowledge. In the quiet, smoky afternoons, between the pub shutting and opening, he would read my Arthur Mee's children's encyclopedia and regale the bemused boozers with bits of Omar Khayyam he thought they would enjoy: "I often wonder what the vintners buy, One half so precious as the goods they sell." Or I might remember my husband watching the first moon shot and feeling glad he had seen that. He was on first-name terms with the Pleiades from wartime flying and, the first time we met, he spelled out the geography of the skies to me as we walked home.
Or perhaps I will only see Coronation Street unravelling, like 40 years of film, until Ena Sharples turns up in a hairnet saying: "Half a dozen fancies and no eclairs." I have always wondered why no eclairs.
