Still waiting for a successful awards programme

Press, 26 November 1979, Page 17

Still waiting for a successful awards programme

There is something about award presentations which turn normally competent television producers into blundering dunderheads bereft of judgement, intelligence or style. There has never been a successful Feltex Awards programme, and I speak as a veteran, because I was present at the famously awful Feltex awards at the Mon Desir Hotel in Auckland last year. (That was me , you could see in the corner! of your screen, spilling a I very bad red wine over al

By

A. K. GRANT

very good white shirt). On ( Friday night. Television Opel gave us the New Zealand; Record Awards, and they, I rather than being the ex-! ception which proved the i 5 rule, were firmly and I ) squarely within the confines) I of the rule itself. | The first mistake was to have three frontpersons, and: I use the word “front-i persons” advisedly, because I if there are two greater “fronters” than Ray Woolf' and Roger Gascoigne, Ij would not like to know of them. Between them they] left poor old Suzanne Don-;

of an inch of screen space, and she was virtually having to clamber over their backs in order to get her face onto the screen at all. The rules of the game require you to have three persons in an All Black front row, but there is no binding law which says you have to have three presenters of a record awards programme,. and I feel that TVI has been) badly let down by its legal) advisers in this regard. The channel should also I have taken legal advice) about Tina Cross’s turban I

aldsoh with about a quarter; outfit, which she wore while") singing a song entitled “Lay Back in Your Lover’s Arms.” I have never understood the cult of Miss Cross, who ; seems to me to be a small,' fairly plain singer with a small, fairly plain voice. But: what was not fairly plain,) although small, was the aforementioned turban out- < fit, which looked so ridi-) culous that I have no doubt; whatever it constituted of-1 fensive behaviour, and IJ shall be bringing . a private : prosecution unless the Attor- 1

ney-General enters a stay of proceedings. Fortunately, talent was recognised when the divine Sharon O’Neill won the award for best female vocalist. Miss O’Neill can light my fire any time she cares to, although I suppose I really ought to get the chimney swept first, and there is a hole in the bottom of the coal scuttle which needs attention. But she is so good that in my opinion she ought to have won the award for begt male vocalist as well; not because there is anything masculine about her, quite the reverse, but because she is a much better singer than Rob Guest, who did win the best male vocalist award. Mr Guest was presented by Roger Gascoigne with hi s award in a dressing-room in glittering Invercargill, and managed to feign astonishment at being the recipient of this tribute. His astonishment was not half as great as my own, and what’s more, mine was entirely unfeigned.