Tuesday 4 November 2008

88:88

Apologies for not blogging yesterday. I was in one of those sorry states of mind/body when the only realistic option was mindless physical labour to the accompaniment of Radio 4, so I spent much of the day cleaning the kitchen. I hope this sorry state wasn't related to the catastrophe that befell on Friday night, when I arrived home expecting to slump in front of Neil Young Night on BBC4, and found that my digital cable box had comprehensively packed up, displaying the straight eights - 88:88 - that identify a box as bound for the digibox graveyard. It could not be fixed until today - which is why last night, with only the wasteland of terrestrial TV to scour, I ended up watching Prescott: The Class System and Me on BBC2.
This two-parter was made in the over-familiar 'journey' format - Nick Cohen nails it brilliantly here - but with the novel difference that Prezza's 'journey' was entirely circular, as he had already made up his mind about the class system, and nothing anyone said to him about it was going to make any difference. Time after time, the people of all classes that his researchers had lined up for him to talk to blew all his class-war assumptions out of the water - but would Prezza take any notice of that? Of course not. He knew the 'British class system' had held him back - otherwise how could a man of his astounding abilities rise no higher than deputy prime minister? - and that was that, at the end as at the beginning. In the course of this 'journey', the Prescott shoulder only accumulated more chips. The sole interesting or attractive thing about this waste of airtime was Pauline Prescott. The mystery of how she puts up with her appalling husband must still be exercising all who saw this series.
Still, the BBC can come good sometimes, even on terrestrial TV. Laurence Rees's latest, WWII: Behind Closed Doors, which is coming soon, is a superb account of Stalin's making and breaking of alliances in the course of the war. And of course there's always Radio 4, which for all its annoying ways, is still something of a national treasure - especially when it has the gloriously sour Ed Reardon's Week (a comedy that cuts across the grain of the BBC and all it stands for - it's a miracle it was ever commissioned). With Ed Reardon for company, cleaning the kitchen was a postive pleasure. Therapeutic too.

10 comments:

  1. Kitchen cleaning should be mandatory in HM prisons, the crime rate would rapidly decrease. Have you noticed Nige, how with the old steam driven technology you could at least limp along on two cylinders while the modern stuff is all or nothing. Devastatingly accurate on all levels is how I would describe Nick Cohen and Standpoint well worth the investment.
    Pauline seems to be the new Elsie Tanner, a genuine character, she should do a Christine Hamilton, another gem married to a waste of space.

    As an employer I spent much of my working life plugging the cracks in the dam caused by trade union idiots like Prescott, who popped out of the womb and hit the ground muttering "them and us"
    Trying the explain that there is no longer any such thing, only "all of us" was akin to reciting Shakespeare to a tadpole.
    Trade union officials, in particular the TGWU were responsible for more UK job losses than Thatcher.

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  2. Yes Malty, it's black box technology isn't it - totally opaque and impossible to fix (rather like Prezza's brain).

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  3. I've no experience of blogging but I imagine that blogging every day must get pretty exhausting. A very good idea to take days off, plenty of them, I should think. Some say that blogging is so 2004 these days, and it's all about Twittering now.

    You must have a darn big kitchen if it takes that long to clean! No room is worth more than about half an hour, imho. Frankly, if my kitchen had a soakaway in the floor I'd probably just jetspray it with a hose.

    I tried the Prezza proggie but turned to another channel after about five minutes. It struck me as Polyfilla programming, just there to fill space, like yet another book of quick and easy pasta dishes, etc. I have a soft sport for Prezza as he is a sea-going man and perhaps for that reason almost certainly calmer in a crisis than most of his erstwhile colleagues, but letting him anywhere near a ministry or the Cabinet was a really dumb idea.

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  4. ...the Prescott shoulder only accumulated more chips.

    ...brilliant!

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  5. ...the Prescott shoulder only accumulated more chips.

    ...brilliant!

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  6. So brilliant it's well worth saying twice - keep it up Selena!
    My kitchen is pretty small Mark - just intricate, full of spider-friendly nooks and crannies. I found a remarkable variety of dead insects, many of them ready-wrapped...
    And if blogging's 2004, that's great by me - I only wish it was 1904!

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  7. Mark, I once suggested a quick run around the kitchen with the Karcher, this was met with stony silence, the sort that has you retreating, and you have a soft spot for le matelot, hmmmm. Prezza never went near the bridge or engine room, he was a waiter, so the term seagoing can only be loosely applied, just like his head.

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  8. Talking of le matelot Prezza, if he needs to supplement his pension he could always apply here

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  9. I think he's still making good money as the dog on the Churchill ads (though it's not his voice, obviously)...

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  10. Malty, I could easily be wrong but I think Prescott carried on with the sea in the form of sailing. Perhaps he still does. That's what I was thinking of, not that I hold his former job against him. Most of his critics are metrosexual milktoasts who haven't been nearer the sea than one of Rick Stein's restaurants. They'd probably pass out if ever they got on a real boat. He is worth ten times the posh gross-outs like Nicholas Soames who used to make fun of him, even if a job in government was something Prescott should never have been allowed anywhere near.

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