Witness for the prosecution

Press, 2 April 1979, Page 17

Witness for the prosecution

I watched a programme on S.P.T.V. on Friday night called “Friday Forum,” chaired by Peter Stewart, In which a court reporter, another journalist and a pretty young woman lawyer all got stuck into Dr Martyn Finlay, Q.C., about the state 6f the legal profession. With Champions like Dr Finlay, the legal profession certainly doesn’t need any enemies. He said that he felt that conveyancing should be done by the agencies which pro-

vide finance for house purchases, revealed that the late Sir Richard Wild, when Chief Justice, had complained to him that the criminal legal aid system was being abused, a concern which Finlay says he shared, and agreed that more people should defend themselves in court and pursue their claims there. He ready acquiescence in the destruction of the legal profession left his interlocutors somewhat floundering, since there appeared to be no question, however provocative, they put to him which he was not willing to agree with. A television review is not the place to discuss the role in society of the legal profession, but I might suggest in closing that when lawyers are finally done away with, people are going to miss them once they find that nothing stands between them and the police or the Ministry of Works except the Housing Corporation Conveyancing Section. I struggled manfully to resist the temptation, but try as I might, a Power greater than myself compelled me

to turn on “The Club Show.” This programme has all the allure of the truly awful, and I was greatly relieved to find that it had not improved since I last saw it, except to the extent that the contestants on “The Silver Shot” were able to get through on the telephone. (How do the contestants work it? Do they lug lheir television sets into the hall to stand by the telephone, so they can dictate their aim to the cameraman? I suppose

the exercise is good for them, but it must be a bit cold in the hall now that winter has arrived so early.) I note that the programme is now being defended on the basis that it is not aimed at highbrow intellectual snobs like us television reviewers, but is made instead for the decent, submerged ninetenths of the population who recognise a good rotten show when they see one. Well, as someone in America once said, nobody ever goes broke through underestimating the taste of the public, and it may be that South Pacific are on to a winning formula with “The Club Show”: half the population will watch the show because they like it, a quarter will watch because they find it irresistibly fnnny, and the remaining quarter will watch it for the same reasons that impel people to go to horror movies. Indeed there must be room for a disaster movie about a gigantic racing commentator who draws innocent young television frontpersons to their doom and devastates whole populations with his singing.

By

A. K. GRANT