Can Knievel be canned

Press, 27 August 1979, Page 15

Can Knievel be canned

Nobody is denying the courage of Evel Knievel, but the ethereal rantings, which, he, with enticement from David Frost, brought into the “Guinness Book of Records’* programme on Saturday evening, shattered what to that stage had been wholesome entertainment. With “Old Glory” fluttering at the launching site from where Knievel was to be fired in a rocket above a canyon, the daredevil supreme — “man was put on Earth to live, not just exist” — laid his philosophy on thick. Then there was spliced-in poetry reading from our “astronaut.” Needed only was a final resonant voice to say, “One small step for man, one giant step for mankind.” But hang in

there. I think Frost rendered that Moon-probe cliche earlier.

Knievel gave himself a 90 per cent chance of survival in the canyon, and the man who has had something like 70 bones broken by previous miscellaneous exploits, did survive; the fans were hysterical. If that’s just living and not just existing, one wonders what Knievel, with hand on heart, does for real kicks. He admitted being a teetotaller and said he nas never taken a narcotic. It’s just as well; one would hate to listen to him if ever he started swigging “Red Eye” and smoking loco weed. Somebody did mention a large sum of money which he stood to earn, but, of course, that’s just incidental. Frost, the interviewer, and Frost, the entertainer, is Frost — a Briton on the American scene, who is thoroughly professional and completely at ease with everyone and everything. He

also gets the fat cheques, the irony in this case being that an American sideshow caller might not have seemed inappropriate to make it pure com. Until the advent of Knievel, the programme had hummed along on Television One, under Frost’s control, with all sorts of world records being set for the viewer, mostly before a studio audience. One record breaker, who like Knievel, expounded his philosophy but in a brief and

more credible manner, was an interesting variation in physical design. Paul Anderson, billed as the world’s strongest man, was quite short, but his 375 lb of body weight was cemented to him like a double-brick outhouse with each of his biceps bigger than Miss America’s waist. At the other end of the scale was the lithe girl who defied mathematics to somehow get under a limbo bar which had less than six inches of floor clearance.

The only really worrying attempt — there was no sweat about Knievel — was the champagne fountain trick in which a record 16 glasses were balanced on top of each other and filled. I kept think, ing the contents might be wasted; but as the applause died the audience rushed forward at Frost’s invitation. My main wish on reflection is that the stuntman who recently wanted to jump from an aircraft without a parachute, does succeed — just to upstage Eve! Knievel.

POINTS OF VIEWING

By

KEN FRASER