TALK IS CHEAP. No one is more conscious of the truth of that maxim than TV executives.

Talkers get less money than actors. They need no elaborate sets to back them up. Studios can be small and rehearsal time almost minimal.

There is no need to supplement them with original film material which entails the expense of large film crews. There is little to be paid in the way of hotel or travelling expenses.

A half-hour talk programme ran be laid on for about one-tenth the cost of a half-hour drama or documentary. Transmitting 30 minutes of conversation that costs £400 [£5,945 in today’s money allowing for inflation – Ed] instead of a play that costs £4,000 [£59,450] can save a TV company, on one programme alone, something like £175,000 [£2.6m] in a single year.

Another advantage of talk from a TV executive’s point of view is that he can use it to substantiate his claim that he is fulfilling his serious and cultural responsibilities to the medium. And it doesn’t cost him much.

Thus in their annual reports, the commercial companies can include long lists of dons, philosophers, authors, artists, composers, editors, scientists, who have appeared on their programmes which helps provide a smokescreen of social responsibility.

For minimal costs the maximum amount of goodwill is achieved.

Little

With such obvious benefits to be gained, it is surprising how little thought, imagination and effort goes into the average talks programme. This is one area of TV where it costs no more to make a good programme than it does to make a bad one.

TV is, of course, largely the art of the cheap budget. Since the BBC is being starved of its additional fee and since the commercial companies are being faced with the increased expense of introducing colour, it is perhaps natural that talk programmes should begin to proliferate on all channels.

If late on Sunday you switch from BBC-2 to BBC-1 to IIV, you will get no surcease from talk, talk, talk. The BBC has just introduced a regular Monday evening show of talk conducted by Michael Aspel. The new London TV companies promise us Eamonn Andrews talking three nights a week and David Frost talking another three nights a week.

Watching these programmes I am constantly impressed by the affinity their producers have with the Bourbons who learned nothing and forgot nothing.

We critics are constantly bing abused for having nothing constructive to offer the toilers in the electronic vineyards of TV.

But it is clear from these latest specimens of cauliflower TV — aimed to assault the ear rather than the eye – that elementary errors pointed out time and time again by critics are repeated by new waves of talks producers as if they were either too stubborn to take good advice, too arrogant to learn from experience or loo lazy to read.

Slavish

The Sunday night chat on BBC-2’s Late Night Line-Up, for example, is modelled with almost slavish fidelity on the format of the old Brains Trust but without any apparent understanding of what made that programme a success and this one a failure.

The formula for good conversation on TV is little different from that faced by every successful hostess organising a dinner party. There must not be too many guests; they must have areas of common interest; the bore must be immediately recognised and neutralised.

Any ideal dinner party, too, must not be composed of complete strangers uncomfortably trying to get on each other’s wavelengths and rarely succeeding before the brandy stage has been reached.

There must be some guests who know each other so well that they can exchange gossip, banter and abuse without feeling self-conscious or inhibited.

Unease

Instead of a team of anchormen like Commander Campbell, Huxley and Joad in the original Brains Trust or Michael Foot, A. J. P. Taylor and Lord Boothby in Free Speech — and these two were undoubtedly the best talk programmes yet conceived for either radio or TV – Late Night Line-Up’s Sunday conversation recruits four new faces every week and rarely has a group so regularly communicated such unease.

Not only does this motley assembly seem to have little in common, but it is only with a great deal of effort that they give any impression of being remotely interested in most of the questions they are asked to talk about.

Thus Yehudi Menuhin discussing the nation’s dedication to sport prefaced his remarks by omitting he knew very little about sport.

Irene Worth, asked to talk about the problem of amateurism in the Civil candour said: “I don’t know. I have no views about this”.

Now what is the basis of assembling Yehudi Menuhin, Sir Edward Boyle, Irene Worth and Roger McGough [respectively, a violinist, the Tory MP for Birmingham Handsworth, an actress and a poet] for a conversation on TV? I can think of only one subject they have in common — music – and possibly drama. Then why are they asked to chat about sport or the Civil Service or heredity?

On the other hand, the following week Willi Frischauer, whose field is politics and journalism, had to artificially convert himself into an authority on pop music and the Beatles.

Drab

Again there seemed nothing to link Willi Frischauer, an exuberant and likeable talker on his own subject, with the drab threesome he was trying to stimulate into something resembling a concerned reaction.

On this programme no one gets angry, no one seriously contradicts anyone, no one seems involved and no one really cares. One has the impression they are all there for their chat fees and little else. It is gentility run riot!

Michael Dean and Joan Bakewell, as the chairmen, seem obsessed with the esoteric and cultural aspects of life to the exclusion of almost everything else. When the panel are asked a question like: “Does the future of culture lie in the development of vernacular art?” not only do the guests seem to sigh a mental groan but the sound of sets switching off throughout the land must be deafening.

Another producer who seems to have learned nothing from the experience of other talk programmes is Christopher Martin, who is responsible for Malcolm Muggeridge’s new Sunday evening programme, The Question Why?

Anxious

Claiming for itself a reflective aim in which such profound questions as the basis for our need for wealth, a longer life, more happiness, would be asked and probed, this programme made the elementary mistake of filling the studio with about 30 people all anxious to get at each other’s throats.

Not only is it insulting to invite so many people to take part in a programme in which their average speaking time can only be about a minute and a half each, but when the topic is to be something as complicated and combustible us the right to strike it is courting verbal chaos to jam so many participants into the same studio.

The Hyde Park Speakers’ Corner format has been tried time and time again on TV — Man Alive only recently had to abandon it — and always the result has been disastrous.

Malcolm Muggeridge trying to discipline the storm of shouts, interjections, insults looked like some benign King Canute stemming the incoming tide with the pat of his hands.

If the questions Mr. Muggeridge wants to ask cannot be answered by civilised talkers in a civilised atmosphere, given a civilised amount of time for reflection and argument, then I’m afraid he has no business asking them at all.

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NO ONE expects logic or consistency from TV executives. The medium has always been a jungle of anomalies, paradoxes, non sequiturs and ad hoc decisions.

But television’s approach to advertising would, by comparison, make the adventures of Alice in Wonderland sound like an exercise in pure reason.

The precise answer to a question like how long is a piece of string is no more elusive than trying to determine when an advertisement is not an advertisement.

Thus the commercial channel was prevented by the ITA from televising the International Trophy motor rave from Silverstone because the cars carried advertisements. Since the natural scenery for this type of event has always been hoardings and banners carrying every conceivable type of advertisement, who would be offended or corrupted by small advertisements on bonnets of cars travelling at 100 mph – would they emerge as more than a blur? — certainly escapes me.

Making this decision even more incomprehensible is the fact that the day following the ban, I watched on the commercial channel highlights of a football match between West Bromwich Albion and Birmingham City where hoardings, proclaiming the delights of White Horse Whisky, Esso, BOAC, Haig Whisky, Coca-Cola and others, competed directly for my attention with the cavorting players.

Surely, then, the ITA should, if only to save itself from the charge of being ridiculous, reveal to us the subtle, perhaps Jeusitical reasoning that has enabled it to distinguish between these two forms of unpaid TV advertising.

The dilemma, of course, arising from the wording of the Television Act, which clearly states that “advertisements must be clearly distinguishable as such and recognisably separate from the rest of the programme.”

This simple cannot be done with sports programmes, and the ITA should obviously stop trying to split semantic hairs in their efforts to prove one form of outdoor display advertising acceptable and another beyond the pale.

If the ITV truly wants to discourage this type of advertising, they might consider adjusting their fees in relationship to the number of hoarding and banners likely to be caught by their cameras. The more advertisements of this nature the promoter has accepted, the smaller should be the fee the TV companies pay him. This sort of rough justice could be effective.

But even a more flagrant form of free advertising that occurs on all three channels is the plug for films, plays or books dropped casually, and not so casually, into light entertainment and discussion programmes.

On the Eamonn Andrews Show recently I saw Mrs Gretchen Wyler, whose main interest, judged from its appearance, was a passion for animals — she didn’t say much about animals — but we heard a good deal about the fact that she was taking over from Juliet Browse as the lead in Sweet Charity.

Similarly, Clint Eastwood, although he had appeared in many violent films, displayed only a repertoire of cliches on the subject of violence which he was presumably there to discuss. Why then was he chosen? I can only assume because he happened to be making a film called Where Eagles Dare, in England.

But BBC-1, in its present slide towards mediocrity, has recently been providing two of the most blatant plug-infested programmes on the small screen:

DEE TIME, presided over by Simon Dee, has become a rich hunting ground for public relations men every where.

On this programme, conversation takes almost second place to free advertising for whatever the guests are involved in.

A few weeks ago three peers of the land were shamelessly boasting about the delights of their stately homes during a discussion that was presumably meant to be about the new image of the aristocracy.

They giggled about the attractions they were offering to the public; they boasted about their takings; they vied with each other about the relative merits of their stately products.

A few moments later Donald Sinden and Bernard Cribbins turned up to tell us they were in a new play in Birmingham.

Except for telling us that girls take their clothes off in the play, that a Miss World was in it and that Simon Dee should say something more about the play, I cannot recall a single contribution either Mr. Sinden or Mr. Cribbins made to the show.

Faced with this avalanche of free advertising, all Simon Dee could say was: “Gosh, there’s so many people I gotta give plugs to!”

The newest recruit to this who’s-for-plugs type of programme is the BBC’s A Spoonful of Sugar. Because it proclaims to be a programme to brighten up the lives of people confined in hospitals, it naturally makes it a somewhat ticklish programme to criticise.

Stephen Potter, in his book Lifemanship, noted that the way to avoid bad notices for a book was to dedicate it “To Phyllis, in the hope that one day God’s glorious gift of sight may be restored to her.” To attack a book with such a dedication would always hold up the critics to a charge of bad taste.

But the fact that A Spoonful of Sugar is concerned with the blind, paraplegics, bedridden nonagenarians cannot deter me from describing it as one of the most embarrassing, ill-prepared, squirm-making programmes I have seen for many years.

There is something basically cheap about using handicapped people – eager to be friendly and cooperative to those who are presumably trying to be charitable to them —to plug actors, BBC’ shows, comedians and even hairdressers as this show does.

To watch Keith Macklin or Sheila Tracy trying to get the poor victim to admit some interest in the personality that waits, beaming and smiling, behind some hospital door is a teeth-grinding experience.

I don’t really believe that these occasions, with the inevitable paraphernalia of cameras, sound equipment, crews and wires that must by crammed into a hospital room, can be anything but a depressing, somewhat nerve-wracking experience for those poor patients, chosen for this spot of limelight.

The let-down, the anticlimax, when all the reporters and performers and technicians have gone must be in some cases most depressing.

I am all for entertainers devoting all the time they can to cheering up those less fortunate and restricted in life.

But they should do it quietly, personally and away from the glare and mechanics of the techniques of plugging. Otherwise their motives are bound to be misunderstood or suspect.

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SINCE EAMONN ANDREWS seems to have a hammer-lock contract with ABC TV that guarantees him large sums of money for some time yet, it is doubtful if anything so drastic as annihilation will take place in the near future.

His recent Sunday evening programmes have managed to reduce conversation to an intellectual level that makes tiddly-winks, by comparison, a major art form.

Neither the producer of this programme, Malcolm Morris, nor its editor, Tom Brennand, seem to have the faintest conception of what conversation really is.

Any dictionary will tell them that it is an exchange or inter-change of views and ideas and not a succension of monologues or party turns stimulated by nothing better than a pre-organised cue on one of Mr. Andrews’s mysterious prompt cards.

And as any hostess from Surbiton to Belgravia can tell them, you are not likely to get good conversation unless the assembled people have something remotely in common about which they are prepared to argue, chat or joke.

But judging from recent recruits to the dentist’s waiting-room laughingly described as a set your chances of being invited to this programme are considerably enhanced if you happen to be an American actor making a film in England, if only a minute proportion of the viewing audience has ever beard of you, and if your talent as a talker is largely confined to your ability to answer questions about your early life with something more than a grunt.

Euphemistically Eamonn’s guests are hailed as Sunday Night People, but consider ing the relative obscurity of a large proportion of them I suggest Wednesday Matinee People as a more appropriate description.

Obscurity, of course, is no bar to being a good conversationalist, but rarely have any of these people anything to offer but an innocuous grin, a knowing nudge about what went on when they saw Frank Sinatra (“He’s one of the greats! Just one of the greats!”) wearing a funny hat on a golf course in Milwaukee, and a mention for the film they’re involved in.

The plugging that goes on during this programme is sometimes shamefully blatant. I remember him introducing a girl called Sheila White, who had an undistinguished song to sing in the musical On The Level, as “A little girl I reckon’s going to be a big star.”

She proceeded to stomp around in a noisy, grimacing manner that would hardly have justified her appearance on Hughie Green’s Amateur Nights and displayed as much star potential as Eamonn Andrews in the role of Othello.

Sometimes the programme luckily gets an extrovert like Sir John Barbirolli who is amusing value as long as no one interrupts his stories. But more often vital personalities like Vanessa Redgrave are reduced to the status of embarrassed, limp observers trying to smile bravely at show biz anecdotes told by their more exhibitionist fellow-guests.

And if his guests could be orchestrated into some sort of a central discussion and leave him with little to do but act as a direction finder, there is no good reason why Eamonn Andrews should not continue to compere it. He is a pleasant, likeable professional.

But it could be that The Eamonn Andrews Show has already reached the point of no-return.

When the best brains, the best wits, the best conversationalists often refuse to take part in it because its standards have become embarrassingly low then there is nothing for ABC to do but either wind it up or get down to some drastic reshaping of the show’s entire structure and philosophy.

– Milton Shulman

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CAULIFLOWER TV KEEPS GROWING like a parasitic ivy on all channels. These ear-bashing, studio-bound programmes, which owe everything to radio and nothing to vision, have an unhealthy way of proliferating themselves.

The interview and the discussion are the two main off-shoots of cauliflower TV and at their best levels these can offer some of the most stimulating and rewarding moments on the small screen.

John Freeman’s Face To Face revealed what excitement could be generated by the confrontation of a serious mind with a serious and sympathetic interrogator.

In recent weeks one could have seen no fewer than four variations on this confrontation theme – The Reputation Makers, with Angus Wilson, Intimations, with Malcolm Muggeridge, The Levin Interview, with Bernard Levin, and People to Watch, with Robert McKenzie and Erskine Childers.

From the various samplings I have taken of these programmes, they are all more or less successful. Indeed, they have a builtin, cast-iron formula for success if the producer is sensible enough to get two essential elements right.

Failures

Most important of all, he must have – as all these programmes have – an interviewer who is not only articulate, quick and logical, but who is catholic in his curiosity and sceptical about values and judgments.

Pit such a man against another intelligent man with an established reputation or deep convictions or imaginative horizons and the resultant talk, if it is given time to develop, will usually be absorbing.

Naturally. there are failures. Sometimes the personalities involved develop such mutual antipathy or disinterest that a barbed or bored exchange of platitudes is the only result. But, on the whole, this is the best kind of cauliflower TV.

The discussion programme, on the other hand, seems to be going downhill at the speed of the devil on a bobsleigh.

Although there is a good deal of discussion on BBC-3, Late Night Line-Up and 24 Hours (a much improved programme, incidentally), the two programmes – aside from religion and schools – that devote their time almost exclusively to a group exchange of views are Late Show London and The Eamonn Andrews Show.

When one compares the calibre of speakers and talk of both these shows with former discussion programmes like Free Speech and The Brains Trust, one becomes apprehensively aware of what TV can do to crush into disrepute the once-civilised art of conversation.

Offender

Late Show London is the worst offender because it pretends to engage in serious talk and splatters all concerned with humiliation by the glib, cynical and fatuous way in which it goes about it.

Although it began as a magazine show aimed at reflecting the gaiety, variety and sparkle of London life, in less than a month it has been purged of everything but the talkers.

The Eamonn Andrews Show, too, seems to be in a desperate plight to find “the famous, frank and funny people” it blurbs.

On Sunday we had three actors – Michael Crawford, Martine Carol and James Booth – and a publisher, Gareth Powell, who might most charitably be described as non-famous, once-famous and non-funny people. With nothing important to be frank about, it’s not surprising they weren’t frank either.

Anyone in the theatre knows that actors can be as witty as Wilde, as wise as Shaw, and as profound as Montherlant only when they have memorised the appropriate lines.

The emergence of the actor as the wit, the sage, the commentator, the thinker of our time reveals into what a disastrous, intellectual abyss we are being plunged in order to please the moronic tastes of the telegawkers.

– Milton Shulman

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Particularly Dave Mackay and Ron Harris, respective captains of Tottenham Hotspurs and Chelsea. All year they’ve been hoping they will end up just like this.

Triumphantly holding the FA Cup.

On Saturday at Wembley Stadium, and before a television audience of millions, 22 of Britain’s greatest club players will summon every sinew to share such a moment.

Since this soccer season started, from the minnows to the mighty, 400 clubs, more than 4,000 players, have been chasing this particular rainbow.

Since the 1871-72 season (when the first F.A. Cup competition was staged) thousands of players — the great names, the immortal names, the forgotten names — have been in the chase.

Since 1911 (when this particular trophy was introduced) the winning of the F.A. Cup has been the ultimate in soccer endeavour.

This year the Cup is mine for a moment. Kings, queens, legendary soccer skippers have held these highly-polished handles. Just like this…

Mind, I haven’t had such a gruelling, heart-stopping time getting within holding distance of the Cup as the winning skipper will on Saturday. But it’s been quite a performance get ting this far.

WHERE am I? Mustn’t say. WHO is in charge of the Cup? Must remain anonymous. WHERE is it stored before going to Wembley? Oh, that’s awfully hush-hush; nobody is even sure yet what route it is going to take there.

This is strictly an undercover assignment. Top secret. No names. Wouldn’t have got within miles of the F.A. Cup if I hadn’t taken the oath of secrecy.

I’m at… well, an address in London. Somewhere in sprawling, densely-populated London. A poker-faced, uniformed commissionaire views me suspiciously and requests means of identification. Makes a short, terse telephone call.

I hear footsteps. Half expect to see James Bond’s Doctor No emerge, but instead it’s a middle-aged man in a grey suit, who leads me silently up winding, red-carpeted stairs. No, there isn’t a blindfold — I must look an honest type.

With memories of passing through the Russian Customs with Hughie Green, I pass into a plush conference room, with heavy blue curtains shielding the light and any inquisitive eyes.

Big-time soccer is understandably jumpy about its silverware since the theft of the World Cup, virtually on the eve of the big event last year.

Still there’s no sign of the Cup. But I should worry. Players and fans have been up for it since the mutton-chop whisker days of nearly a century ago. Few have got this far.

Only three men in Britain know exactly where the Cup is after the February 1 deadline date — when winning clubs must return it to the Football Association — until the Final.

No official is permitted to be photographed with the Cup. Some shady type might recognise him and trace the Cup through him. Apart from when it is cleaned (by a highly reputable firm), it is never out of the sight of two young, anonymous “guards”.

Ssshh. I think they’re bringing it in now.

The whole Cup is packed in a large, black box in wads of tissue paper. It emerges in three parts — lid, Cup and plinth. The “guards” piece it together without speaking, as though it is the rarest of china.

And there it is… a most magnificent bauble.

It is the little things that strike you. Like the knob on the lid. Practically a small replica of the Cup itself. And the depth and size of the inside of the trophy. Magnums of champagne have ended up in here and I reckon it would need a gallon to fill it.

The off-beat stories of the years come drifting back… in 1955 Newcastle’s jubilant players, about to swig the celebratory champers, found a set of false teeth in the bottom. In 1964 West Ham startled soccer by drinking milk from the Cup.

Now that seems sacrilege. It’s a champagne or nothing trophy.

On the plinth, the inscribed names of the winners. The greats, the disbandeds… Old Etonians, Old Carthusians, Royal Engineers, Aston Villa, Blackpool… they’re all here, fading slightly, but carved into soccer immortality.

There are 85 names here (since 1871-72 season, but excluding 10 seasons when Cup fighting was abandoned for wartime fighting) and they’re fast running out of space. Another silver strip will be added at the very base of the plinth in a year or two which should take us through to about 2000.

Lift the Cup… gently now. It’s heavy — nearly 11 lb. Perhaps that’s an unexpected reason why winning teams pass it around on their victory lap of Wembley — it gets to be quite a weight for one man to carry for a whole lap, particularly after 90 minutes of flat-out football.

But I’ll wager this problem is one either skipper will be happy to tackle on Saturday…

This is the third Football Association Challenge Cup. The first one was stolen in Birmingham in 1895, while Aston Villa were the holders, and the Villa still have rather red faces at the memory.

The second was withdrawn in 1910, after it was found to have been duplicated several times in design. It is probably the best-known trophy in the world… yet it is insured for £300!

Only £300? Just ask any member of Spurs or Chelsea Or any soccer fan worth the name in these islands. It’s the Crown Jewels, all the stars in the skies and Killamey, rolled into one. Utterly priceless.

But the stony-faced officials, viewing my awe unemotionally, declare with astounding aplomb that the cash value of the FA Cup is “the price of 175 oz. of scrap silver!”

That’s about £75 by current market price. And Mr. Richard Came, partner in charge of silver at Sotheby’s, reckons the auction value of such a trophy — forgetting its sentimental value — would be about £250.

Scrap silver? Auction the Cup? Perish the thought! This is the end of the rainbow.

Here’s a final revelation. Right from the inside. You want a tip about the potential winners on Saturday? Well, scrawled in chalk on the bottom of the zealously-guarded F.A. Cup box, is the message: “NEXT STOP — CHELSEA.”

IT’S all very well for us. We’ll have our feet up. a comfortable chair, and a cup of tea at half-time. Saturday’s F.A. Cup Final will be an exciting, but congenial experience for us, thanks to ITV.

Spare a thought for the personalities whose Cup Final won’t be nearly so relaxed. For whom split-second liming, quick thinking, and sheer hard work spell out Cup Final ’67 — the ITV Wembley team.

How do they view Saturday’s great occasion? And how do they see the first all-Cockney Final this century ending up?

While we will be watching, mainly, one thing — the ball — Billy Wright, ITV’s soccer expert, will be casting a cool eye on other things. Sweat on shirts, socks rolled down. Lines on faces. Players breathing heavily.

These, then, are the tell-tale signs that Billy Wright — winning skipper at Wembley in 1949 with Wolves and a man who has played on Wembley’s lush turf around 80 times — will look for on Saturday.

His tip? “Possibly a draw — we’ve never had one in a Wembley Final, after all.”

Eamonn Andrews, ITV’s anchor man, faces an afternoon of thrills… and frustration. Based at Wembley, he’ll see parts of the game, then must dash back to his desk to bring viewers up to date with the general sporting scene, for ITV have a full sporting programme, including wrestling and racing from Lingfield.

If Eamonn seems agitated don’t worry. He tipped Tottenham for the Cup back in the Third Round in December in World of Sport — and had a 10 bob bet on them at 100-7! Score: 3-2, with Jimmy Greaves getting the winner.

For Hugh Johns, ITV’s commentator, this is his first F.A. Cup Final behind the mike.

He will be on parade again next week. On Wednesday, he does the commentary when England meets Spain at Wembley.

He says: “My idea of the perfect commentary is if, after the game, viewers think: ‘What a terrific game — wonder who the commentator was?’ Not too much chat. Just identification and unobtrusive information.”

Hugh, who did a fine job for ITV on the World Cup Final, lives in Wales, and naturally, he will be watching the big-name Welsh players in the Final — Tottenham’s Mike England and Cliff Jones (if he plays).

His tip? “If both teams strike top form, Spurs to win 2-1 — with an intriguing duel between Mike England and Tony Hateley of Chelsea.”

And while we’re talking about tips, my colleague Maurice Woodruff this year picks Chelsea to win by 2-1 or 3-1. “Spurs to start well, but drop away,” he says.

Me? I think the winner is going to be ITV, whose Cup Final service this year looks bigger, better and more professional than ever before. Oh yes, and Tottenham to win 2-0

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