A Bloody Curse fall on Nationwide and it's favourite son
Is this really the country I am living in?
No!
Are these the issues we should be concerned with?
No!
But, some people actually thought they inhabited the world that Nationwide misrepresented. When Nationwide ended it was too late for them, they were already suffering from the effects of Nationwide's mental thalidomide.
Of course '90s and '00s popular television only looks good in comparison with programmes like Nationwide. Nationwide must be a modern TV production company spiv's touchstone. We are not like Nationwide.
- "Where's the jeopardy?" said an executive at Channel 4 when my brother and I presented a TV programme idea on Bullfighting to him.
Well there's the jeopardy and the justification for a lot of modern programming!
Why couldn't he have shared a little bit of his passion with us? Perhaps it would have been far more healthy and educational if Frank Bough, instead of fronting the most evil programme in the history of British television - had, instead, demonstrated to us how he got his jollies. Perhaps if British children had accidentally watched a bit of a drug fueled sado-masochistic cross-dressing, instead of being tricked by inertia and hope into watching the first 10 minutes of Nationwide every night for 14 years, they might have learned something.
I hate Frank Bough just as much because he was not authentic in the Heideggerian sense. He wasn't true to himself. Frank, through Nationwide, skewed our own sensibilities, as he heightened his own. He seemed to me to be the inauthentic face of an inauthentic programme, so absolutely false that nowadays you can google Frank Bough, and puff ping boffffff shhssss and only one image of him emerges from the electronic cave. But we do get this from TV.com :
"Nationwide ranks 10756 out of the 18279 shows on TV.com. Nationwide has 1 fan"
And the BBC is also - perhaps unconsciously - trying to erase Nationwide from living memory. Apparently, there is only one complete copy of all the Nationwide programmes and they are in a Sony video format that rapidly degrades. Soon the BBC will be able to deny the existence of Nationwide, one of its greatest televisual crimes.
Tom Baker joshes Frank Bough in a rather erudite and knowing way.
From 9th September 1969 to 5th August 1983; that's 14 terrible years, the British population and British children were subjected to the accursed programme Nationwide. It was a blurry magazine format plastered into prime time. Nationwide marked the end of creative children's programming and the beginning of a Tsunami of slop. Nationwide, with Bough at its wheel for much of the time, was a machine for turning meaningful life and reality into mere sound and pictures. Nationwide was the televisual equivalent of the sound in the Malabar caves that drove Mrs Moore slightly mad - it was like a bulimic vampire worm moving through the ether sucking and chucking at the same time: boff ssss buff ssss boff ssss.
Nationwide rehashed the trite received wisdom of the day and spat it back at you lukewarm for 50 putrid minutes. It was the essence of alienation.
Skinhead culture had it's day and the skins revelled in "Paki bashing" unnoticed and ignored by the media. The best popular music on this side of the ocean had its glory day too - but you wouldn't have known it from watching Nationwide. Students were revolting as a prelude to selling out and becoming Jack Straw and Mr. Darling, and while the foolish cool were experimenting with drugs, British manufacturing juddered to a halt and the spirit of the working class and its allies in the intelligentsia was shattered. But while all this went on we received our daily dose of 50 minutes of Nationwide. It was the the equivalent of drinking an ulcerating pint of Double Diamond in a plastic 70s pub mixed with Valium - and not minding at first.
Nationwide rehashed the trite received wisdom of the day and spat it back at you lukewarm for 50 putrid minutes. It was the essence of alienation.
Skinhead culture had it's day and the skins revelled in "Paki bashing" unnoticed and ignored by the media. The best popular music on this side of the ocean had its glory day too - but you wouldn't have known it from watching Nationwide. Students were revolting as a prelude to selling out and becoming Jack Straw and Mr. Darling, and while the foolish cool were experimenting with drugs, British manufacturing juddered to a halt and the spirit of the working class and its allies in the intelligentsia was shattered. But while all this went on we received our daily dose of 50 minutes of Nationwide. It was the the equivalent of drinking an ulcerating pint of Double Diamond in a plastic 70s pub mixed with Valium - and not minding at first.
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Northern presenter: "Well it's all over, the second general election within a year and as the singing and the celebration parties dies away (?) we put the record right with a comprehensive review of all the main results East of the Pennines."
Frank Bough: "And at six thirty five in Network Nationwide we are keeping well away from those election results [smiles knowingly]. We have a new sport for you, a very unusual art display at Rochedale and a cheerful challenge from the Midlands. Jimmy Hill here looks at tomorrows sport..."
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* * *
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Nationwide was a poisonously anodyne experience in sensory disassociation for the British "Volk". The programme made you ask yourself the question:
Is this really the country I am living in?
No!
Are these the issues we should be concerned with?
No!
But, some people actually thought they inhabited the world that Nationwide misrepresented. When Nationwide ended it was too late for them, they were already suffering from the effects of Nationwide's mental thalidomide.
Of course '90s and '00s popular television only looks good in comparison with programmes like Nationwide. Nationwide must be a modern TV production company spiv's touchstone. We are not like Nationwide.
- "Where's the jeopardy?" said an executive at Channel 4 when my brother and I presented a TV programme idea on Bullfighting to him.
Well there's the jeopardy and the justification for a lot of modern programming!
"Our stuff isn't like that Nationwide's stuff"....
Now the spivs and the marketer's in television commission "edgy" (exploitative) programmes. But, the opposite of boring crap is exciting crap. That's what these TV homunculi forget.
Will she lose weight?
Will he get the job?
Will they get on?
Will he win?
Will they find a cure?
Games programmes only look good in comparison with "the Golden shot." Modern, bully-boy / bully-girl British comedy only looks good in comparison with Les Dawson and Mike Yarwood. Really, nearly all of modern British comedy is self deceiving over-marketed hyped up, shit purveyed by the most unfunny and money hungry TV executives you can imagine. Modern comedians are not the social conscience of our nation, they are merely social climbers.
Will she lose weight?
Will he get the job?
Will they get on?
Will he win?
Will they find a cure?
Games programmes only look good in comparison with "the Golden shot." Modern, bully-boy / bully-girl British comedy only looks good in comparison with Les Dawson and Mike Yarwood. Really, nearly all of modern British comedy is self deceiving over-marketed hyped up, shit purveyed by the most unfunny and money hungry TV executives you can imagine. Modern comedians are not the social conscience of our nation, they are merely social climbers.
..
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..
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.But back to Frank Bough. While he was administering us this Bromide this Seroquel, Abilify, Zyprexa, Risperdal, Geodon, Haldol, Thorazine, Clozaril, Trilafon and Stelazine of a programme, apparently he was involved in cross-dressing, cocaine and sado-masochism. Welcome to it, I say. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. He was living a heightened sense of reality - on the Isle of Wight -a difficult thing for anyone to do there, but he managed it - while our sense of reality was lowered. Election results just in, says the chap in the North, Frank chuckles in the Nationwide studios:
"Well we'll have none of that here."
"Well we'll have none of that here."
Why couldn't he have shared a little bit of his passion with us? Perhaps it would have been far more healthy and educational if Frank Bough, instead of fronting the most evil programme in the history of British television - had, instead, demonstrated to us how he got his jollies. Perhaps if British children had accidentally watched a bit of a drug fueled sado-masochistic cross-dressing, instead of being tricked by inertia and hope into watching the first 10 minutes of Nationwide every night for 14 years, they might have learned something.
I hate Frank Bough just as much because he was not authentic in the Heideggerian sense. He wasn't true to himself. Frank, through Nationwide, skewed our own sensibilities, as he heightened his own. He seemed to me to be the inauthentic face of an inauthentic programme, so absolutely false that nowadays you can google Frank Bough, and puff ping boffffff shhssss and only one image of him emerges from the electronic cave. But we do get this from TV.com :
"Nationwide ranks 10756 out of the 18279 shows on TV.com. Nationwide has 1 fan"
And the BBC is also - perhaps unconsciously - trying to erase Nationwide from living memory. Apparently, there is only one complete copy of all the Nationwide programmes and they are in a Sony video format that rapidly degrades. Soon the BBC will be able to deny the existence of Nationwide, one of its greatest televisual crimes.
Tom Baker joshes Frank Bough in a rather erudite and knowing way.
So, ... I gather that you don't fancy this Bough particularly, Phil, and won't be taking him or Barack with you to a desert island. . .
ReplyDeleteSays something for your style, though, that you got me to read all the way to the end of the entry when I've never seen or heard of an upper-case Nationwide (except in ancient building society ads).
But ... tsk, tsk ... Surely, ... Will _he_ lose weight??? Will _she_ get the job ????? Or you will encourage people to stay stuck in the old stereotypes? :)
Put it down to childhood trauma, Wordy. And what is the reason why people don't remember Nationwide after 14 years in a prime time slot. Well, because the programme was designed to be soporific and reassuring and the guy who fronted it was a sado-masochist trying to make the programme so safe and normal that no one would suspect.
ReplyDeleteWhat we got was the truly dark side of a sado-masochist - they call it normality.
Stephen Fry's grandfather was Martin Neumann from Slovakia. My great grandmother was Regine Neumann and her cousin was Paula Neumann, originally from Vienna via Checkoslovakia.
ReplyDeleteMy mom had Checkoslovakian nationality when she left Paris with her mom, they both did.
Paula's brother was a little hunchbacked man called Eric Neumann. Very unsmiling. Blamed us for not visiting her enough after she died in Dorset Square.
I suppose that makes us, possibly, distant relations.
A delightful Paula post, Phil (after this entry) -- although the end is sad and so common. I mean, the complaint from the very old and failing about not being visited enough. I like the independence of the old monk and his style of departure in that glorious Korean film ... Spring, Summer, etc.. . . The old Eastern idea of turning away from people and towards philosophy in the last years of a life is profoundly appealing. Of course it helped that old monk that he appeared to be in such fine physical condition before his final illness. Dementia would have ruled out independence, as requiring help with eating, ... blindness ... locomotion problems ... etc., would also have done.
ReplyDeleteBut the preoccupations of younger people are so different that it's hard not to bore or alienate the very old with spontanceous answers to their questions about what you've been doing lately.