Once again I was listening to
the hourly news on Radio Four yesterday morning and heard the authoritative
voice of the newsreader start the sentence “The veteran broadcaster Sir David
Frost…” and held my breath. If there is a positive to come from a person’s
death, then it is the relief you feel when it is death rather than an arrest
for a historic sexual offence. I know that I wrote exactly the same thing when
Paul Shane died, but those feelings of disbelief ran through me again as I’m
sure it did everyone who listened.
Sir David Frost is a massive
loss to the industry, and reading through the obituaries today I was amazed at
his CV. There were things in there that came as a surprise. In the 1960s he
started his own production company and owned the rights to his own shows,
something that is commonplace nowadays but unheard of back then. When Simon Dee
died a few years ago I commented about how different his career could have been
in the present climate. From my point of view, it is David Frost the comedian
that means the most to me. I knew about That Was The Week That Was,
(which lives on today as Ten O’Clock Live),
and The Frost Report as a child, although in the pre-YouTube and pre-UK GOLD
era it was difficult to find out more. It was my love of The Two
Ronnies that pointed me towards learning about Frost and his legacy.
I found a complete episode of That Was The Week That Was
on YouTube, (there aren’t many left due to the BBC’s fuck-witted policy of
recording over programmes to save money on tape) and was astounded at how ahead
of its time it was. Without these programmes, we wouldn’t have had Spitting Image, Have I Got News For You, and every other ‘satirical’
show that came afterwards. There aren’t many people who can combine satirical
comedy, hard-hitting political interviews, and lighthearted daytime family
entertainments such as Through The Keyhole.
It is a shame that Sir David Frost died on the day that Through The
Keyhole was revived by that ridiculous one-joke character Keith
Lemon. ITV seem obsessed with creating vehicles for this character that only
caters for the lowest common denominator.
Twitter and Facebook (remember
Facebook? It’s making an inexplicable comeback) went into a meltdown this week
when Rolf Harris was charged with historic sexual offences. The big shock was
that some of these aren’t even that historic. This situation comes back to that
same problem; we don’t like it when it is somebody we like. Let’s face it, we
all loved Rolf, and are finding it difficult to make a judgment on this one. I
know we all watched Jim’ll Fix It and wrote to the show, but hindsight reminds
us that the rejection disappointment at least meant that we escaped a dressing
room bumming. The news that Jimmy Savile was a paedophile didn’t really
surprise anyone; I wrote about my suspicions in 2008, and because he didn’t
come across as a likable person we didn’t really worry too much about it. Jim
Davidson is another case in point, someone who comes across as a charmless,
odious cunt is not going to garner any sympathy. My friend and colleague Darren
Patterson remarked that he doesn’t want to live in a world where Jim Davidson
is innocent and Rolf Harris is charged. Of course it is still innocent until
proven guilty in this country, but a part of our childhood has been tainted. My
personal memory is of the BBC programme Cartoon Time
(which I don’t think was eponymous), and Rolf sitting at an easel
drawing a picture with a marker pen before showing a clip. Once I videoed an
episode and painstakingly paused and watched, drawing the lines as he did until
I eventually had a perfect picture of Daffy Duck.
Gary told me that Rolf had the
pictures penciled on the paper already and so wasn’t really drawing felt tip
images. Honestly, the more I hear about him, the less I like him.
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