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Re: Chris Neill calls my site "peculiar"!

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nylon netJul 27, 2009
 

 
Fear not, Dean. Your statistics are said to be peculiar, not your site ;-)

nylon.net
nylon@...

> -----Original Message-----
> From: dbedford@...
> Sent: Tue, 28 Jul 2009 08:44:30 +1200
> To: just-a-minute@...
> Subject: [just-a-minute] Chris Neill calls my site "peculiar"!
>
> 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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