A splendid mess

Press, 2 July 1985, Page 19

A splendid mess

r Reviewl

Ken Strongman

The grand regression has finished for another year. New Zealand has re-opened and started to look out into the world again rather than in on itself. Ken Ellis and a host of good-humoured visitors are pulling their facial muscles back into normality after saying “thank you very much” several million times.

“Telethon” is a phenomenon of amazing proportions. It is a gigantic, sweaty, exhausting, confused, numbing, balloonpopping, splendid muddle. The lid is lifted off the entire country and out roars the raging extrovert that is apparently inside the reserve and inhibition that normally rules. It is as though for 24 hours all the usual social conventions are suspended, all criticism ceases and people take the opportunity to do things that they would not dream of doing during the other 364 days of the year. Since the cause is always so palpably good it excuses almost anything. Throughout the country people simply do to excess whatever they feel they can do best, from folding nappies to baking sponges, from folding sponges to baking nappies. Of course, there will have been a few who took a different sort of opportunity and slept a lot.

Those like Ken Ellis who front Telethon are extraordinarily impressive. They re-

main good-natured, pleasant, and vocal. They show great stamina for 24 hours. Their eyes become redder and redder and the pouches beneath them deepen. It is like watching a rapid ageing process, particularly by contrast with the sparkling fresh newcomers that drift in briefly. Ragged as they must be, they keep going admirably, however.

What of “Telethon” as a television programme? There are long stretches which are very dull indeed, but it all remains strangely compelling. It is important to keep watching just in case in the midst of all that mess, noise and complexity, something interesting happens. Occasionally it does and so it is difficult to leave the room, particularly when Ken Ellis keeps saying “what a fine gesture.” I missed every one by not looking up in time.

It must be an awful, formidable, dreadful, but massively stimulating spectacle to produce. A full day with large numbers of people involved and only a tenuous control over what might happen. The various

producers are probably still sleeping. Meanwhile, the viewer is left with that disquieting mixture of interest and disappointment that comes from so much seeing behind the scenes. Where is the illusion? There is a sense in which the enormous, enthusiastic, generous, amateurishness of “Telethon” epitomises New Zealand. It is rip-roaring and direct, crude and obvious, and yet supported by the most worthy of motives. It is a fine old mess from which nothing but good emerges, the final word in the proper Kiwi “she’ll be right” and “good as gold” attitude to life.

Tail-pieces: An excited news item about the raising of the speed limit pointed out that there will be “Australian detector strips across the road.” To what end should we wish to detect them?

The dreadful hostage business has had an unexpected side-effect locally. It has been fascinating to watch various newsreaders work their way round an unequivocal pronunciation of “Shi-ite.” They must have been sorely tempted. It is nothing to do with me, of course, but having seen both matches I feel compelled to report that the Kiwi-Kangaroo game was about 1000 times more entertaining than the All Black-Wallaby game. What would happen if the Kiwis played the All Blacks?