Something to Bragg about

Press, 17 December 1985, Page 11

Something to Bragg about

I Review]

Ken Strongman

To carry on from one of last week’s diatribes, the only good thing about “Kaleidoscope” finishing is that it has been replaced by “The South Bank Show.” This is the type of programme which makes one excited to own a television set. It is thorough and goes into things in proper depth. It is a celebration of quality and, at the risk of being boringly repetitive, has the sort of style at which “Kaleidoscope” should be aiming rather than what we are told is to happen. Last Friday’s programme featured two fascinating and very hard-working men. Michael Crawford, with more tension than the high wires on which he walked, went to a circus school in New York to learn the skills he needed to play in Barnum. If anyone else showed this much concentration and dedication in some more mundane walk of life, he or she would be regarded as obsessional.

Crawford is congenially impressive, tough-minded and tough-bodied, as hard on himself as he needs to be to give the best possible performance. Yet, after all this, he ended by saying “I am not really good at anything.” But he has a great, child-like pride in his various achievements. There is something old-fashioned about Michael Crawford. It is so rare to find his vastly positive attitudes these days, or to find someone with such verve-he even brings to mind these oldfashioned words.

Billy Bragg makes the same sort of impression as Alan Bleasdale. He is a young man of his time, a political troubedour, who makes punk look childish. He is a product of the working class wasteland of Thatcher’s Britain and is using his insightful intelligence to comment. He has a refreshingly direct approach to his music which he seem as inseparable from .life, which in turn he regards as essentially political. So “These are the lyrics and this is wot I’ve gotta say” and “You don’t ’ave to ’ide be’ind great banks of synfesizers.” He grew up on the

outskirts of London with a view of the future expressed by “You didn’t wanna to go to Ford’s, well, there’s the army, the navy or the airforce.” Thank heavens he protests. The only thing wrong with “The South Bank Show” is Melvin the adenoids Bragg. He is a good writer and he has a vaguely cultured television presence, but he does sound like a prune when he chimes in with his pontificating descriptions. The type of person featured on this programme can speak for themselves far more effectively than Melvin Bragg can speak for them. After listening to Billy Bragg’s songs and descriptions of life, it just sounds silly to hear Melvin say “Billy Bragg’s work rate is prodigious.” “Prodigious” is a Melvin word, an academic word. Billy Brag would say “Well, yeah, I spose I work fairly ’ard.” Michael Crawford had Melvin’s measure though as he took him behind the scenes at Barnum. He didn’t exactly patronise him, but spoke as though to an ageing uncle who could not quite understand. It is a pity, but Melvin Bragg seems to be another person slightly spoiled by being the talent in front of the camera.

As a warm-up to “The South Bank Show” it seemed worth dipping into “The East Enders” just to see how life in the Square is progressing. It is easily summarised: sex, theft, sex, graft, sex, life, and death, sex, dodgy mo’ors, sex, illness and sex. The inhabitants snap and snarl their way through these concerns, fighting damp and decay and trying to darn the threadbare remnants of their social fabric. Then it’s orf for a swift ’alf to drown their failures. Of course, it is exag-

gerated and has the feel of a stage play, the Square is so small. But it still seems almost authentic, in an approximate, husky-voiced, seen-it-all sort of way. People smile knowingly and live out lives which they have to make melodramatic _ in order to make them mean anything. In the end though, the best thing about “East Enders is the music, which is truly evocative of the emotional mixture of optimism and cynicism which is working class London. Tailpiece. Could it be that the nightly “Meny Christmas from One” is a seasonal greeting from a member of the royal family?