Just A Minute

 
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Chris Neill calls my site "peculiar"!

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Dean BedfordJul 27, 2009
 

 
A very nice article in the Daily Telegraph last week by Chris Neill -
last para mentions my site...



A few months ago the Controller of Radio 4 hosted a dinner to celebrate
Just a Minute’s four decades on air. I could see that look in Mark
Damazer’s eyes as he greeted me which says I’ve absolutely no idea who
you are, and I’m too polite to ask. I don’t entirely blame him, as I am
easily the most un-famous person ever to appear on the show. When I
reflect on it, I realise how lucky I am.

There is something both silly and rather splendid about a group of
grown-ups – in some cases extremely wealthy grown-ups – gathering from
time to time to play a parlour-game invented by a schoolboy before the
Second World War. Hundreds of people turn up to watch, and millions more
tune in to listen. It co-exists on Radio 4 with Money Box Live and In
Our Time – but we’re in the far more serious business of trying to speak
on subjects such as My Favourite Socks, Tripe, or How I Would Describe
Myself to an Alien without hesitation, repetition or deviation.

Most of the shows are now taped at Broadcasting House, but recordings
out of London always seem to be more fun. Audiences on the road are
particularly enthusiastic, and there is the giddy whiff of the
travelling rep company as chairman Nicholas Parsons, the panel, the
producer, and the broadcast assistant-cum-whistle-blower gather
beforehand for a glass of warm white wine and a curling sandwich. For
me, this half-hour is rather unsettling. Friendliness is in the air, but
not without a certain brittleness – and, when Clement Freud was around,
an anxiety as to whether he might throw a tantrum about something.

Clement could be outrageous, filthy and extremely funny – but you would
have to have been an ostrich not to notice his more cantankerous side.
It would be churlish, though, not to acknowledge my debt to him. It was
he, along with the new producer Claire Jones, who suggested I appear on
the programme when I stopped producing it in 2000. Clement’s patronage
of new players could, however, prove mercurial: he would quite often
whisper to a Just a Minute novice that this was “the worst show we’ve
ever done” – the implication being that it was all their fault.

I never received that damnation (not to my face, anyway) but Clement did
have a habit of turning a kindly gesture on its head. My last shows as
producer took place in Devon, and generous old Clement brought a magnum
of vintage port with which to toast me on my way. Whether he forgot or
chose not to, the port wasn’t decanted before the show and, by the time
Clement got the hotel barman to wrench it open after dinner, it had been
shaken into less than the best of states. The poor barman had to take
the brunt of Clement’s ensuing fury, and what had been a rather sweet
gift turned into something much less merry.

Having said all that I do miss Clement, as also I do Derek Nimmo and
Peter Jones – two players who I produced but never got a chance to sit
alongside. Peter was slyly funny, sneaking up with the most brilliantly
witty lines, whereas Derek was adorable for many reasons, not least his
ridiculous requests. Once, on a rather bad phone line from his house in
the south of France, he complained bitterly to me that the BBC should do
the decent thing and pay a higher rate of petrol allowance to
Rolls-Royce drivers as cars like his “positively drink the stuff.”

Someone else I miss very much is Linda Smith. It’s over three years
since her pointlessly early death and she remains the person it was most
fun to work with. In 2001, on my first shows as a panellist, Linda sat
next to me and on a notepad wrote the words “have fun”. Not “good luck”,
just “have fun”. I just try to find a balance between making the
audience laugh, and not annoying my fellow panellists by interrupting
too often (sometimes, if I feel I’ve been a bit too gobby, I even put
the buzzer down and wait for the queasy feeling to pass).

There’s a man in New Zealand who amasses the most peculiar range of
statistics about the show and apparently points-wise I am the least
successful player ever which, I suppose, is a kind of achievement. But
if I ever feel down about my skill at the game, I remember Linda’s
simple and wise instruction. On the very best editions of Just a Minute
that’s exactly what you hear: everyone having fun. And that’s a lot more
than can be said for In Our Time.

 
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