Monday 17 December 1963

It's the final John Betjeman in the West Country, and this week the man himself appears on camera, looking a mite confused by his guide to this week's destination, the seaside resort of Weston-Super-Mare.

Mr B surveys the town's seemingly endless rows of bed and breakfasts before we get to look inside one of them.

Once the kiddies are in bed, the parents head out to view the bright lights of Weston (nobody worried much about babysitting back then).

The next day the poet takes a trip to the beach, where he casts his eye over exactly the sort of things you might expect to see at the seaside.

There's a Salvation Army concert in progress, which garners an interesting range of reactions.

As the film draws to a close, Betjeman takes us away from the seafront to look at some of the more interesting architecture in town, lamenting the forthcoming demolition of a row of old houses to make way for a new supermarket.

We end with him pottering about Weston's modern village like a benign Godzilla in a straw boater, appreciating this record of how the town once was and musing, "It's a curious thing, nowadays, that most of what we like to look at nowadays has to be make-believe."  Too true, Mr B.  Too, too true.

Next tonight, it's that Monday night fixture, The Plane Makers.  Like several previous episodes, it's compelling and deathly dull in equal measure.

It should come as no surprise to regular readers that The Plane Makers' boardroom battles are considerably less interesting to me than what super-secretary Kay Lingard's done with her hair (it's an up do this week - you can see it here in one of the high angle shots that proliferate in this week's episode)...

...So it's not surprising that I wasn't exactly gripped by the main business of How Do You Vote?, a plan by Scott Furlong's managing director John Wilder to build another 12 Sovereign jets, and his attempts to secure the backing of the company's board.  Here's our first sight of Scott Furlong's decrepit new chairman, Sir Gordon Revidge (Norman Tyrrell) -  who seems to have been installed purely to piss Wilder off - discussing Wilder's plan with one Lord Teddington (played by Anthony Sharp, a constant presence in 60s and 70s TV as authority figures of one kind or another, but who never seems quite the same once you've seen his remarkable performance as a homicidal Catholic priest in Pete Walker's House of Mortal Sin).

Fortunately writer David Weir seems aware that not every viewer will be fascinated by men boring on about aeroplanes for an hour, and has added in a human interest-type subplot.  Involving Eric Thompson, father of both Emma and Dougal.  He plays Philip Hammond, an employee who's been sacked on the spot by Wilder for apparently having his end away with a young lady in the back of a car hired by Wilder during a works dance - and then calling Wilder a filthy pig and a power-mad idiot when he was discovered.  The next day, Hammond's horrified by what's happened, but his attempts to get his job back are in vain.  At one point it seems he might be contemplating suicide.

As the board convenes for their meeting, Hammond's boss, intense, unsmiling chief researcher Dr Katz (played by Alan Tilvern, and not to be confused with the cartoon of the same name) makes a dramatic entrance.  He's furious that Wilder's fired one of his staff without consulting him, and when the managing director refuses to listen to Hammond's side of the story, he insists it be put before the board (Hammond's a computer operator, and these are very hard to come by).

It turns out that the girl in the back seat with Hammond was his pregnant wife, who'd fallen ill and who Hammond was helping when he was berated by Wilder - hence the abuse.  When Wilder refuses to retract Hammond's sacking Katz insists the board vote on whether to retract it.  The subsequent vote goes in Wilder's favour, but due to the board's moral disapproval of his actions (or possibly just to piss off Sir Gordon), he announces that he'll apologise to Hammond and reinstate him.  Much to Wilder's frustration this move's vetoed by the chair (the climactic meeting's surprisingly nailbiting stuff).

Wilder's plan for the 12 Sovereigns is just about approved, but Sir Gordon (who voted for it), hints darkly that the bank he chairs won't be willing to finance them.  The meeting's dragged on hours longer than it should've, and the episode ends with Wilder phoning his son to tell him he won't be meeting him at his boarding school to take him out to tea after all.  It's the human cost of big business.  Or something.

Monday 9 December 1963

This week, John Betjeman waxes lyrical about the market town of Malmesbury in north Wiltshire, dominated by what's left of its vast medieval abbey.  "I dare say they couldn't draw very accurately," Mr B muses of the monks' illuminated manuscripts.

But the monks' lack of accuracy was more than made up for by their enthusiasm for the nature that surrounded them.  And who can blame them? As presented in this film, Malmesbury looks so unspoilt that the approach of a Mini to the market cross seems almost sacrilegious.

The highlight of the film is the ascent to the abbey itself, with Betjeman likening the pilgrims who trekked there in the middle ages to modern day holidaymakers flying to the Costa Brava.  The abbey featured such tourist attractions as a fragment of the True Cross, and I'd like to think there was a souvenir shop selling holy stuffed donkeys.

Before we go there's time for the story of Malmesbury monk Brother Elmer and his attempt at flying.  Less like Icarus than a premonition of the Bognor Birdman competition, he ended up with two broken legs.  His commemoration in stained glass is a fine example of the British love of failures.

Talk of aviation problems brings us seamlessly to tonight's instalment of The Plane Makers.

The problems here are being caused by test pilot Simon Wanleigh (Bernard Brown), whose apparent distraction during a flight with Captain Henry Forbes nearly leads to disaster.

After the flight, Simon meets his friend  and fellow pilot Terry (Brian McDermott), and both behave rather strangely.  While Terry's back's turned Simon swaps their gloves, and Terry acts rather cagey when asked what he was up to the previous Thursday.

As we ponder on this, Forbes is being put under pressure by Arthur Sugden to reveal who was responsible for the mishap in the test flight.  The story's made the press, and when John Wilder gets back from his latest business trip both Sugden and Forbes' heads will be on the chopping block unless they can satisfactorily explain.  Forbes' instinctive loyalty to his fellow airmen is shaken by Sugden's insistence that this is simply not how things work in the world of business.

The business with the gloves is explained when Simon returns home to his wife Anne (Judi Dench lookalike Zena Walker).  A couple of days ago he'd picked up his gloves, only to realise they weren't his.  Investigation of Terry's pockets that day revealed that his friend had taken his pair by accident.  But he's not aware of Terry visiting recently...

"Do you know why I've been so cool this weekend?" Simon asks.  "Because I was afraid to touch you in case I killed you."  Anne admits she and Terry have had a fling but insists it's all over now, and she never felt anything other than pity for him.

On Simon's next flight, we learn that there's something wrong with his vision.

At the end of his tether with Simon's errors, Forbes warns him that unless he pulls himself together his career at Scott Furlong's finished.  Visiting an optician, Simon learns that the shock of Anne's infidelity has led to a blood vessel bursting in his left eye and causing it to lose virtually all its sight.  Obviously this is not the best of news for a pilot.

The Best of Friends is a middling Plane Makers episode, but there are a couple of especially good scenes.  When Terry goes to Forbes to explain what's distressing Simon, the chief pilot despairs at the way his men have come to rely on him in times of crisis: "Skipper is not another word for Dad."  Reiterating Sugden's dictum that he can't let his loyalty to his men get the better of him, he refuses to hear about Simon's problems, knowing he'd make possibly dangerous allowances due to them.

There's an especially affecting scene where Simon, who cares more about his wife and friend not feeling bad about what they did than what their affair's doing to him, pitifully attempts to convince Anne that he slept with someone else once too.  She doesn't believe it for an instant.  It turns out there really was a girl he liked, but Terry got her too.

Simon plans to take one last flight, to Rome, where he'll have his eye operated on and then return to Anne with her none the wiser about his sight - he doesn't want her to blame herself for it.  But before take-off he's forced to tell Forbes about his blindness, begging to be allowed to go to Rome all the same.  

Forbes - horrified at the lengths Simon intends to go to in order to save the feelings of people who've betrayed him - refuses point blank.  The episode ends with the painfully buttoned-up Simon thrown off the plane, and preparing to open up to his wife for the very first time.

Monday 2 December 1963

For Wales and the West this week John Betjeman waxes lyrical on Marlborough in Wiltshire (pronounced "Maulborough", if you weren't aware), and especially on his own former school, Marlborough College.  The film shows us a lost world of fagging and making toast over the fire in your room (well, I say lost.  I've never been in a public school in my life, so I've no idea if this sort of thing still goes on.  Though I suspect the odd electric toaster might have been sneaked in).  As someone who never goes out into the cold without toggles securely fastened it's especially pleasing to see such a preponderance of duffle coats.

Another famed aspect of public school life (one which in the 21st century would be more likely to be known as "fagging") is unsurprisingly left untouched, though it's clear the hormones of the school's pupils are a-raging.

It's the glorious ordinariness of Betjeman's verse musings that make them so compelling:"The dining hall we're looking at is new/I wonder if it smells of Irish stew/In the same way the old one used to do."  Some lines ("Time to digest a sausage; time to fly") are crying out to be sampled by some mastermind of ethereal electronica.

The film, like the classic schoolboy of fiction, is especially interested in food.  And as it's the now almost exotically plain looking British food of the early 60s this makes it especially interesting to me.

Next tonight we greet the return of John Wilder, defeated in his bid for the chairmanship of aircraft manufacturers Scott-Furlong but unbowed.

Wilder has a new objective in mind: a knighthood.  To this end he's schmoozing with government ministers for all he's worth.  As he prepares to greet one of them diligent secretary Kay Lingard makes sure he's presentable.

Various hints are dropped throughout the episode that after her sabotage of her husband's chairmanship bid, Mrs Wilder's no longer around to perform duties like these - the most vivid being Wilder's fury when PR man Steve Miller (Donald Morley) asks if she might be available for an interview for a woman's magazine.

The minister visiting Scott-Furlong's played by George Woodbridge, best known for his character turns in early Hammer horror films.  Perhaps it's the legacy of all those rubicund innkeepers he played, but Woodbridge just seems too much of a yokel to be convincing in the role -especially as he's meant to be a Tory.

Meanwhile, Tony Maccabee (Malcolm Webster), another of Scott-Furlong's PR chaps, is in Westminster trying to sweet talk another MP, Keith Saville (Richard Vernon), an influential backbencher with his finger in a lot of pies.

One of the pies Saville's fingering is a South American business run by a man named Vega, who's in the market for jets, and who Scott-Furlong have been trying to woo.  Saville's no fan of Wilder's, so it's a bit of a surprise when he agrees to accompany Maccabee straightaway to Paris, to nab Vega from under the noses of Scott-Furlong's French rivals.

Unfortunately, Act One of Strings in Whitehall is The Plane Makers as the kind of stiflingly dull business soap it usually manages to rise above, but a couple of developments in Act Two help to perk things up a bit.  The first of these is the arrival of the colourful (metaphorically speaking) Vega, as well as the extensive family he never travels anywhere without.  Vega's played by Bruce Boa, for a long time British TV's go-to American, though I've never before seen him play the Latin kind.

There's also some terrific verbal sparring between Patrick Wymark and Richard Vernon as they take Vega out on a test flight, Vernon's loucheness a splendid foil for Wymark's steely cunning.

And what's more, we get to marvel at an extremely unfortunate visual effect that perhaps explains why we've never seen the Scott-Furlong Sovereign in flight before.  Maybe best to stick to stock footage in future.

Wilder casually drops in to conversation the scandalously huge amount of commission Scott-Furlong's agents around the world get for securing sales of their aircraft - then asks Vega if he'd like to become their agent in South America.  He readily agrees, and his purchase of a pair of Sovereigns looks set to go ahead - as long as the government can help the company reach a repayment plan that will keep everyone happy.

That evening Wilder's set to be interviewed on TV, and dramatically alters his prepared script so it becomes an attack on the government's reluctance to help out business, giving his minister friend a sneak preview before he goes on air...

As Scott-Furlong's sales manager Don Henderson prepares to watch the interview, he's terrified that it could have awful consequences for the company...

...But Wilder only has glowing praise for the government.  It looks like he's got what he wanted.

Finally this evening, a detour into the world of current affairs.

A week after the assassination of President Kennedy, it's "What the Americans call Thanksgiving: but in Dallas, where the people probably have more riches to give thanks for than any other city on Earth, there is no thankfulness."

The documentary shows us that first post-JFK Thanksgiving in Dallas, focusing in particular on:

The obscene wealth of its richest citizens.  As various local notables appear on screen, the prim voiceover invariably reminds us that this person is, of course, a millionaire.  Why these people even buy clothes for their dogs!

The gap between rich and poor.  While a millionaire geologist and his family are shown enjoying a lavish turkey dinner in their luxurious home, the black people of the town have to make do with tinned food.

Right-wing nutcases.  These are most vividly represented by the deceptively sweet-looking Mrs Beth Anderson Rochelle, a publicist for the John Birch society, the city's most powerful right-wing activist group.  Like the scariest Joan Crawford character ever, Mrs Rochelle's calm explanation of her belief in the American people to look after themselves without help from the government is belied by the maniacal glint in her eye.

I've no idea how accurate a picture of Dallas in 1963 this documentary gives, but what makes it fascinating TV Minus 50 fodder is what it says about the British view of the US at the time.  The programme makers' attitude seems to lie somewhere between condescension, bafflement and stark terror.  One moment in particular illustrates how much more closely our culture's become entwined with that across the pond since 1963.  As we're shown a group of Dallas children greeting a special visitor, the voiceover explains to us that while to us this is clearly Father Christmas, in America he's known as Santa Claus.