Opportunity may knock, but who’s listening?

Press, 26 June 1978, Page 15

Opportunity may knock, but who’s listening?

By

A. K. GRANT

t Watching “Oportunity s f Knocks” on Saturday was a 1 < momentarily confusing exper- ' tience. I had not spotted 1 '< Robin Stewart for a while, i •>and so was unprepared for t this remarkable hairstyle, full s i.of ringlets and curls. < ? Standing next to Heather it ‘Eggleton, whose attractive i' - hair is fairly straight by com-! “parison, he looked as though Is through some mix-up in the Is

South Pacific hair-sculpting i' department he had been given Heather’s hairstyle, and she his. Such androgynous confusion of secondary aspects of sexual differentation is very puzzling for a simple 1 joker like myself. However, I soon felt at home as the acts i commenced; back in the world of the Women’s Institute concerts that I used to , be taken to as a child. A pleasant girl sang a song that ;

sounded as though it had been written by Richard Tauber’s sister, and a subIvan Rebroff-impersonator nearly overbalanced beneath an enormous fur hat as he sang a song that spoke of endless Slavic sufferings or the Steppes, and in the Civit Theatre. A man called Stuart Dear sang an extraordinary song about a lift girl. I say extra

ordinary, because from Mr Dean’s tone and facial gestures it was clear that he intended his song to be funny and thought that it was, though the song itself contained not one word or line on which such a belief could be founded. I found irritating the practice which has grown up of calling the show “OpKnocks,” as though it were a beloved national institution

; which will always be with us. If they want a bisyllabic name for the programme, then “Stone Me!” and “Hosed Off” are just two that spring instantly to mind. “Hudson and Halls” were as entertaining as ever. Saturday’s was their final programme, and I shall miss them, even though I shall be writing scripts for their replacement, (no, not “Telethon, the script for that is being written by the “Over the Teacups” editor of the “New Zealand Women’s Weekly.” Hands up all those twisted, cynical curmudgeons who confess to dreading in advance the wonderful spontaneous upsurge of community spirit that is going to take place dead on time between 6 p.m. on Saturday night and 6 p.m. on Sunday night. Yes, I agree, it WILL serve me jolly well right! when I get rheumatoid arthi ritis).

As an amateur chef-cum-sink-drinker, I am delighted to see this practice carried on with such style and charm by this chirpy, unfootieplaying pair. God knows what their stuff tastes like, but who cares? It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive, and with H and H you travel not just hopefully but cheerfully.

Another series which came to an end on Saturday was “The Duchess of Duke Street.” I much preferred this to “Upstairs, Downstairs,” partly, I suppose, because it was based on real life. Gemma Jones was good as the fictional version of Rosa Lewis, thought she overdid the waddling walk a bit towards the end. John Welsh, as Merriman, her butler, achieved an infinitely richer characterisation than Gordon Jackson as the boring and sententious Hudson. I got a I bit sick of Champagne Charlie Haslemere, but felt sorry for him at the end as he went off to marry a wife who looked as though she concealed an extinct volcano beneath her icy exterior. Champagne was very much the central motif of this last episode. Louisa, Omar Khayyamlike, turned down an empty bottle as Charlie left her, and everybody drank gallons of the stuff throughout. The Boys Scouts who cleared away the Bentinck’s bottles probably made so much from their work that they were able to drive to it in Rolls- | Royces.

POINTS OF VIEWING