The eternal struggle of good against evil

Press, 12 June 1987, Page 15

The eternal struggle of good against evil

“Fair Go" ended its run on Tuesday night, and a very strong run it has been. The programme has consistently rated in the Top Ten, and clearly viewers enjoy the drama of seeing villains rub bished before their very eyes, and of watching a microcosm of the eternal struggle of Good against Evil. Philip Alpers, as chief presenter, seems unable to overcome his air of r smugness, but perhaps he doesn’t even bother to try. After all, one of the things about being smug, presumably, is that you feel in a smug sort of way that you have a perfect right to be smug. I must confess I didn’t agree with the final programme when it rub bished the Legalong TV ad. I think that women are wonderful and that their legs are one of the most wonderful things about them. I can’t see how that statement degrades women, or how an ad which shows lots of legs attractively hosed degrades women either. Nor do I think that most women think sb, other-

wise they wouldn’t go to so much trouble and expense to purchase and wear the offending garments in the Legalong ad to which “Fair Go” and its viewers took such strong exception. It is true that not everyone has legs like the legs in the Legalong ad. I don’t, for example. But I don’t feel the ad is turning me into a mere sex object. As a matter of fact I rather wish it would. I have always wondered

what it would be like to be a sex object However disagreeable it may be to some people on ideological grounds, it must surely beat the hell out of being sexually ignored, or of being the sort of person whose sexual approaches reduce prospective partners either to tears or to uncontrollable fits of hystericaT laughter. The award of the warrant for the third television channel will be made any day now, and this column can reveal, as a result of contacts which it cannot reveal without making them seem to be laughing stocks, that the lucky contender is none of those who have spent two years and millions of dollars seeking the elusive prize. The warrant will go to a legal consortium headed by the well-known Christchurch solicitor, Mr T. B. Prolix. Mr Prolix told this column that he had secured the warrant by pointing out to the Broadcasting Tribunal a littleknown section of the Broadcasting Act which required the Tribunal to award him the warrant without his having to pre-

sent any evidence. “I am not going to tell you which little-known section I am talking about,” Mr Prolix told your reviewer, "otherwise certain other lawyers around town who are not part of my consortium would be into this thing like a rat up a drainpipe. But rest assured that I have got the warrant and I am going to< make the most of it

“Let me tempt you with a morsel. One of the first programmes we' ■ will make will be a glossy series called 'Hereford Law,* all about the sexual shenanigans of a bunch of Hereford Street lawyers who never ever get down to court because they spend all their time making assignations with each other in the law library. There will be no explicit scenes involved, but anyone who has ever wondered why his lawyer’s hand is shaking as he witnesses the signature to a mortgage will pick up the general drift.” Your reviewer will keep readers of "The Press” apprised of Mr Prolix’s further plans, as details become available.